i think that is part of why -- even republicans who care very much about spending are nervous to use that as a bargaining chip again. we saw how damaging bringing into question the credit worthyness of the government. the fight should not be should we pay the bill? >> there is an interesting question about in retrospect if republicans leveraging the debt limit to get a bill that cut spending by $1 to $2 trillion going forward whether that was worth it? they introduced liquidity risk. if you don't cut spending we're not going to vote for a debt limit increase. it worked.

the president agreed to cut the spending by a significant amount. now, would you like that negotiation had resulted from not having made that threat? absolutely. but do you think it would have occurred? there's the difference. i would never be one to advocate that congress should not increase the debt limit. they should. when this came up in the summer of 2011 i wrote that and they put that in the pages of "the initial review." i was arguing against those who say let's look and creating a cash crunch. that is the wrong thing to do. congress has the ability to decide what they want to attach to the legislation. that is appropriate for congress to attach spending cuts to that. if you give your teen kid a

credit card and the kid blows through the credit limit. you don't stop paying the bill. you pay the bill. those obligations have already incurred. you have on on by allegation to pay your bill. you don't let the kid keep the credit card and keep spending. you pay the past bills and you sit down and say we're going to cut your future spending. that is what i was advocating that republicans in congress do. that is of course you increase the debt limit but try to package that with fiscal discipline so you can make a little bit of progress. >> i don't disagree in a sense, i agree we have to pay the debt. we have to pay the bill. the idea that the only way you got president obama and the democrats in congress to cut

spending is to threaten them that is not true. that one piece of inside information is president obama really cares about the deficit. if there is something he noticed in the first two years when the economic crisis had to be front and center, the thing he wanted to deal with was the long-run deficit. the idea that he went on a spending binge if you don't make threats like that is crazy. the evidence is there that he put spending cuts on the table. he asked them for them to be paired with tax increases as well. there is more good will than people realize. more agreement that we have such a big budget problem that will we're going to fire on all cylinders. we have to cut spending. frankly, we have raise more

revenue. >> you're listening to the california program and our speakers are economic experts. we are discussing national, regional, and global economic challenges. you can find video online. there's a series of questions around employment and job growth. what what is your outlook on job growth? >> i will start. i think -- i will say i was here last year and i'm more optimistic this year than last year. we made a significant amount of progress. it looks like housing prices have started to turn the corner. if you look at household balance sheets we see that consumers have paid down that debt that

weighed on them. i think there are reasons to be optimistic. i am fairly optimistic. i think we still have things weighing on us. i think the concern about, are we going to shoot ourselves in the foot and not raise the debt ceiling? or not come to an agreement on varies things is one of the main things that can derail us. i'm more nervous about europe than some people. interest rates are down in some of the most troubled countries and their troubles are still there. we still have a risk to the economy. i don't see us heading off to a robust, fast recovery. i think 2013 will be better than

2012. i wish i could tell you that it would be really good because that's what we need. >> i don't call myself an economist. i specialize in economic policy. i try to be a good consumer of other forecasts. one thing i learned from that is frankly i don't trust any macro forecast that goes beyond six months. i don't think -- they are just guessing beyond that. i think we probably -- at least i would have similar reactions. i am still concerned about the risks posed by europe. i'm still quite concerned about the risks from things heating up in the middle east. the u.s. economy is repairing itself. we don't have at significant housing drag that we did a year or two ago. balance sheets are repairing.

yes, things seem to be heading in the right direction. but i also think that people often make the mistake of confusing the level for the growth rate. i think we need to understand that even if the economy grows at 2% or 3% this year which seems to be the optimistic but realistic forecasters out there. you are still operating in a range of high unemployment. if our economic potential grows at 3% per year and you're actual output is growing at 3% per year that means you're not going to close the gap quickly enough. one of the things maybe you can answer the question that i have not found an economist who can tell me why recent recoveries seem to be so much slower than in the past. this one is different because it is resulting from a financial

shock. we don't seem to be getting the rapid upslope that you would hope in any case and that is a concern. >> i think you did answer the question. i think in large degree the reason this recovery is so different because this recession was so different. precisely a typical recession in 1982 the feds pushed up interest rates to get inflation down. just as housing got crunched in the recession and when you pushed up interest rates it came back. we started from a housing bubble but the fed was already trying to help the economy. we don't have the natural drivers. it has been this hard, long process of repairing balance sheets, getting people over the

fear and the uncertainty that was caused by living through something we haven't lived through in 75 years. that is a big part of why this has been slow coming out of this. >> my favorite word in that is flexibility. the more flexible your structure is, the more flexible your economy is the easier you're able to adjust to shocks. i fear the added inflexibility that has been created by expansions of government because they make it harder for managers and private firms to react when bad things happen. they tend to happen. >> we have a set of questions around regulations, in particular dodd frank. a lot of business are financial institutions are grappling with

how do you institute that? what is your outlook on being able to institute dodd-frank as it -- part of it goes into law? >> i think it is an important step forward. this is one of those cases having lived through a financial crisis which was caused by financial innovation getting ahead of our regulatory structure you have no choice but you come through it and say we have to fix the regulatory structure. i think it is well-known that the biggest part of dodd frank is not all the new regulations it is largely, higher capital requirements for banks, higher equity requirements for all financial institutions. that makes sense. it is basically -- it is a market approach at some level to regulation. the best way to make sure firms don't take risks that we don't

want them to take or that are damaging to the economy is you have to have skin in the game. i think that side of it, i think is going to be very good and we're phasing that in. i do worry a lot of dodd-frank was left to be filled in. all the rule making is a slow process, it does create difficulties for businesses. one of the things you do worry is it is a time when rules can get weakened or the basic principles are there but the devil is in the details. we need to watch that. i'm somewhat concerned that we're not going to do enough as we write those rules. >> dodd-frank, small topic. [laughter] increase capital liquidity

standards, good. complete i will ignoring two of -- completely ignoring two of the largest financial institutions that still cause problems and will cause taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, freddie mack and fannie mae. the approach behind dodd-frank was rearrange the chart. there used to be a group which was the treasury secretary. that group has added a few more people to it and changed the name. it is pretty much the same people, they have slightly different tasks and i don't see that chart saying you smart group of people you are responsible for preventing risks. i don't see that is going to do it. my biggest concern with

dodd-frank, there is a paper in england. it is about too big too fail institutions. it basically is pointing to the approach that was taken in dodd-frank. it is saying look, the problem of the 2008 financial crisis is that the regulatories and supervisors didn't have enough information or the authority to do something about it. then when they did, they didn't do something about it. they need to give the -- them more power and tell them to be more aggressive. that plus increased capital lidty means we don't have to worry about too big too fail institutions because they won't fail. the government can step in when an incompetent manager screws

things up. i just don't have the faith in government that they can see it coming and they can prevent it. so the question is, we now have something like two dozen stemically important institutions, former i will known as too big to -- formerly known as too big too fail institutions. we have a structure that is like the structure we had with fannie and freddie. nobody wants to acknowledge it and we're all hoping that these institutions won't fail through some combination of competent management and government supervision. i don't think you have that

combination. what you are left with relying on when one of the managers messes up, when the regulaters don't catch it in time there is enough of the cushion that you don't have to do another bailout. the thing i found most significant about this when the lead governor at the fed for implementing the measures for dodd-frank. he gave a speech and said, basically, we don't know how to measure it, we don't know how to do this. congress you have to do it again. for the lead appointed by president obama who worked for president clinton to say we don't know how to measure risk and we don't know how to address it when that was the core function of dodd frank. the law has been a failure in addressing the underlining causes of the crisis. >> i know you want to say

something at that point. >> too big to file is a huge -- too big too fail is a huge issue. you get nervous saying let's shut down at a certain size. it is a hard issue which there is not an obvious solution. you are selling dodd-frank too short. beside all the requirement that are designed to prevent failures from happening, one of the parts was the idea of living wills. fm institutions are supposed to write -- one of the thing the law try to make clear is we're not going prop up a particular institution if it gets into trouble. it has to be a way that it can be wound down that won't bring the system down. that is one -- if we can imme men that. if banks will do this is an

issue. but that was a piece of the legislation that we hope will be helpful. >> i agree. in concept i support living wills. it is a great thing to try to do. i hope it works. the question is, are you comfortable having a financial system where you don't know if the living wills will work and you don't know if they will work until you get into the scenario where it is being tested? in particular what i come back to, if you assume you can work it out domestically. take one of these global financial institutions, is this going to work globally? when i think back to is leeman and buckleys. where bernanke was trying to get

the british regulator to approve it and the answer was no. even if you get all of the smart people in treasury to negotiate international treaties on this is how we're going to make it work across borders. if you get into the point where it is on the brink again, i don't think they can put up firewalls to say it is not my problem. i'm skeptical they can make that work internationally but i now they can. >> we have a set of questions around health care. i know you can't talk about the economy unless talking about health care. you're views on health care, the impact of health care on the economy and how do we make it a positive impact versus a drag on

the economy as we've had? >> we're getting into a pattern here. i will start off. health care is a huge part of the economy. one of the questions people often ask about the first year of the obama administration. why did you take on health care at the same time we're having all these other issues? the reason was health care is not just a huge moral, social issue also an economic issue. we have to deal with that is something that can be helpful for the economy going forward. if you ask, what is the positive on health care? how is the economy doing? what is the snerkt the economy that is adding jobs? it is the health care sector of the economy. i think it is -- that's partly

because it is a dynamic sector coming up with incredible innovations, the amount of exciting discoveries that are looming on the horizon are bigger in health care than other parts of the economy. that's the positive. the hard side is it is a complicated side. the reason why we don't leave health care to the private sector because it is complicated. we don't look at someone on the street and say sorry you don't have insurance so too bad for you. we as society is going to take care of that person. that is what puts the government in this position. it was an incredibly important step. it is a lot like dodd-frank that the basic framework was sound. the devil is going to be in the

details. we're in this 2013 on how we ramp this up and all the regulations that go in, the insurance exchanges so people can have a place to buy insurance at the start of 2014. that is going to be a huge thing to imme innocent over the next -- implement and that is incredibly important. >> my guess is every person in this room is spending a lot more on mobile telecommunication services than they did a decade ago. but we think that is worth it, in fact, we all made that decision in our own lives. the added benefits of having a smartphone or ipad is worth the added amount that we spend. on the health care side, you have to make sure you are defining the problem correctly. on the health care side we have

unsustainable health care cost growth which is driving slow growth in wages. employers are spending more on covering health care and less on wage growth. two, it has meant there has been a large number of uninsured. as it gets more expensive people can't afford it and thursday, it is bankrupting state governments. the problem is that president obama got this correct. he did not define the problem as we have too many uninsured. we defined the problem as unsustainable health care cost growth. then i strong strongly disagree with his solution which is government financed benefit to a bunch of people.

then increase government intervention with private sector health care is going to result in slowing cost growth. we got the expansion of access, by the way, mostly through medicaid. we have gotten that so the cost is built into the system. what we have not got is any kind of certainty that health care cost is going to slow. in fact, what history suggest the more you move the payment to a third party, the more that gets spent. this has been true with the creation of medicaid, it helps the people in those programs but it increased the level and the growth rate of spending. it is true in private insurance as well. my fear is we have expanded access but if anything we exacerbated the growth in health care.

i think is way to go is push the decisions more to the people who are receiving the goods and services. it is move toward consumer directed health care for routine services. then people can make tradeoffs and figure out, am i getting good a good dart, is this worth the cost? you don't want more spending or less spending. you want high value spending. you want to say i'm getting a lot of health benefit for this dollar. >> given the way our system is set up the consumer wants more and more. all that innovation has a potential impact of driving costs up and not down? >> absolutely. this is where we agree. with the inefficients in the system but there is disagreement on to push it more to government or more to individuals will reduce the spending. the principle driver in health

care spending is the adoption of -- we're consuming more and better health care. the new drugs are making our lives better but it means we're spending more just as we're spending more on smartphone services. >> the president made the containment of costs a big part of the legislation. he -- there were two parts, there was the expanned access that was the moral issue and social issue and a labor productivity issue. i did a study looking at the economic case for doing health care reform. and part is making sure everyone has access to health care you have a healthier labor force. you don't have workers that stay in a job that is not a good fit

but won't leave because they have a pre-existing condition. on the cost containment, again, we have to see how it plays out. it another one of these experiments. we don't have a lot of -- how do we slow the growth of health care costs? >> no country has figured this out. it did two things that keith should like. one is consumer directed -- the making consumers -- estimate decisions. one thing that was controversial was putting a tax on high-priced insurance plan. they have few deductibles and no co payments. so one of the hardest sells for a democrat was to say let's put a tax on the high-priced plans to make sure that we still have some consumer choice.

i think that -- or consumer decision making. that is important. the other thing that the legislation did was to basically say, let's try a bunch of experiments. let's try, you know, doctors will tell you organizing things is a way to encourage more services and not necessaryly better care. let's try bundling payments and not pay the surgeon and the nurse and the hospital. but instead you are having a knee replacement here's the money and you figure out how to get the patient well as fast as possible and make sure they don't come back to the hospital with an infection. those kinds of experiments are one way we can try to figure out what will work. it is a mixture of more market incentives and the bold experimentation to figure out

what would work. >> this could be a two-day conversation. >> when i worked for president bush he proposed repealing that exclusion and replacing it with a standard deduction that did not create the incentives to have it more towards health care. it is on the left that forced the legislation to only tax extremely costly plans. i agree there. but, what led us to the broader fiscal question to entitlement spending. the argument made in 2009 by the administration was, yes, we have growth in the entitlement programs. second point, that growth is all

about health care costs. don't worry about social security. if you look after 2050 health care costs are too high. we're not going to make it to 2050. demographics are a bigger driver than health care cost growth. that argument was used by the administration to take social security out of the entitlement discussion. ok, now the purpose of health care cost growth. what is the solution? the solution proposed was to expand access to taxpayer subsidized insurance. then try to set up experiments that might allow the government to figure out ways to reduce the number of services that each person is using. the increased costs are going to occur. those are locked into law and it

would be difficult for anyone to come in and undo them. we've added in the certain cost growth for when you have three entitlements. on the other side, if we thought those experiments were going to work, we would expect the government actuaries to be lowering their forecast for government healthcare costs. they haven't. if you look at both the government actuaries are now saying will happen about federal health care's ending, the problem is -- healthcare spending the problem is worse. you do not have to fix social security, the affordable care act will fix our spending problem. we fixed that areas they are now saying we haven't done it. so we have to do some unspecified health care reform. that is a problem. >> no one ever said we've never

had to do anything about social security area where the description has always done is that the problems in social security are more manageable. it has a deficit if you look over the next 75 years. reasonably sensible changes that we could understand could dilip that area there is a lot -- you deal with that. people say we should deal with that. the affordable care act was never supposed to solve all of our entitlement programs. it was all a mixture of, we do have a problem that 40 million americans that don't have health insurance or access to healthcare, we want to to deal with that problem. the president promised to do it in a way that did not increase the budget deficit by a time. he did that by raising some revenues, cutting other kinds of spending, parts of medicare and

medicaid that he thought were not sufficient in could be dialed back, and putting in these measures that would hopefully slow the growth rate of healthcare cost over time. what a medicare actuaries are projecting -- one of the most important things is, at the time the administration was doing this, the congressional budget office looks at what we were doing. , you have to have something like tax on high price lands or are not going to say it will be a sensible thing to do. that legislation was geared toward slowing the growth rate of cost. the experts at the time were saying, it looks as though they are doing the things that could make a difference. >> there is a technical point here. there is a difference between reducing the deficit and slowing government healthcare spending. if we set aside all the debates whether they got their scoring correct. and that cbo scoring is what the referee says, it reduces the

deficit. it did not say that it slows or reduces health spending. it reduces the deficit even though it increases government health spending and the deficit because it has got tax increases that are bigger than the increases in spending growth. to the extent that our long-term problem is driven by demographics and the growth of health care spending, the law has made the second of those worse. >> that is not -- you are right, there is no question that we expanded coverage to millions of americans. i think the number was 32 million people will have it that did not have it for. that is not free. that comes at a cost. it was a for in part by tax increases and cuts in other government healthcare spending.

it was not all on the revenue side. what i think is important is for the congressional budget office saying it reduce the deficit in the first decade, which is what they usually look at areas but if you look on the second decade, we think it will reduce the deficit and more. they were giving credit in thinking that it would slow the growth rate of some of the healthcare spending. that is an important point. >> let's switch to another passionate topic. education. quite a few questions from the audience on how much can we afford to fund and where should we be funding and investing in the educational system? should it be done on a national level or a state level? >> let's mix it up, you go first. >> i have read that test scores

of american elementary and secondary educational students have not increased and the famous nation at risk report in the early 1980's. even though spending has increased dramatically. i question whether the solution to the problem is, let's take those systems and pour money into it are. it's hard to argue against earning more money, that and possibly hurt. but you basically have major structural flaws in the way the system is organized. it is not producing the results that we need. i strongly believe that -- i would say, after entitlement spending, i would put the quality of our educational outcomes as the greatest long-term threat to america's economic strength. it is the most important thing, and it has to do with structural flaws that are

largely tied to having a system that is still modeled after the one-room schoolhouse schoolhouse of the 19th century. >i don't think our spending is the solution. the teachers unions are preventing the kinds of innovation and experimentation that we need. to figure out how to improve educational outcomes. i think they are incredibly effective at doing that at the local, state, and federal level. what is fascinating is, when i talk to or read a bunch of the education reformers, and they all sit around arguing. the arguments go like this -- if i did not have the teachers unions preventing me from doing my reform, here is what i would do and it would fix the system. they all begin with that same premise. if the teachers unions were not preventing me from doing my reform, then mine would work. they argue about whose reform is better. but they all start with the

same thing, which is that number of them can compete on their ideas because they face the same hurdle. i do not think we know which of the structural reforms is the one that will lead to better outcomes, but i think we do know that none of that experimentation is being allowed because of the stagnation in the system. it is holding everybody back. >> one place it is encouraged is some of the programs that president obama put in with the recovery act and try to continue. the race to the top program. we were designing the recovery act, one priority was spending all the money come on let's do things to help the economy. let's also do things are good for the long-run health. a bunch of money to state and local governments to say, you are in trouble, you don't cut services or education, here is the money. a chump was held back for the race to the top program.

a competitive grant program. one of the key parts is, rather than viewing the teachers union as an adversary, can a community getting union -- get the union and get something, if they could come up with something they got the money. that is a good model for not just demonizing the teachers union. one of the places where the economic evidence is probably strongest is on the value of spending at very young ages. some research coming out of the university of chicago, not usually a hotbed of liberal ideas, especially on the economic side, investments and really young children. they do seem to have real value, and test scores and graduation rates on the line. that it's one place i would be

looking for spending more money . even in tough budgetary times, you do not cut everything. where is the good money? even earlier interventions than preschool. at risk mother son they are pregnant. work with them when children are infants. teach them how to nurture their children so they can succeed in school. >> looks spending the night about the california economy. as governor brown doing a good job with our economy and are we stabilized now in terms of the economy and poised for growth? >> you will have to do this one. >> i guess there is no debate on this one. >> governor brown has done a remarkable job. the california economy was hit very hard by the recession. we had a big collapse in our house prices.

we had state revenues that are very sensitive to the state of the state's economy. california, when i was in the government, the number of times i said, we have full faith that will afford you will deal with its problems. we were praying that california would deal with its problems. a state in great distress. the change that we have seen over the last four years has been incredibly positive. the state is still in trouble. our unemployment rate is still close to 10%. we are not out of the woods. what is so remarkable is the degree to which the governor was able to cut spending. being at the university of california, we know that spending got cut. we saw it every day. but he made the case to voters. he was willing to cut spending, do you want me to cut spending or raise your taxes?

it is remarkable, but the degree to which he explained it to the voters and to which the voters said, we are willing to tax ourselves for seven more years because we do not want those services cut. that has been a remarkable achievement. the idea that the state that was a fiscal basket case four years ago is looking at balanced budgets going forward is really important. i give the governor a lot of credit. >> i am not well-qualified to comment on california specific questions. briefly, there is a very useful lesson here. which is that we should care about the state and the federal level. we should care about the deficit. we should care about the difference between what the government is spending and collecting. extremely important.

we should also care about the size of government. we should care about both. what we have done over the past several years is illuminated concerns about the deficit. we have done that to a large extent by increasing the size of government. the bigger government is, the fewer resources there are for california families and businesses to do with they want to do with them. so, you have got to take both of those into account. i think that one of my concerns is, if we simply say, deficits are not a problem, everything is better, we are ignoring that other dimension. in reality, policy makers are making two decisions. one, when they're deciding that deficit, they are allocating resources. borrowing from our states future income. two, they are allocating sources between the public and private sector and making

decisions about how efficient economy is. i cannot answer on the specifics of california. >> the remarkable thing is the degree to which the california voters said, we have a view about what size of government we want. there are services we do not want to see cut, like education and some of our social services. we are willing to tax ourselves. that is surely the right way to make those decisions. >> they did not decide to tax themselves. they decided to tax those five rich guys over in the corner. >> unfortunately, we have reached a point in our program where there is only time for one last question. i think you may be in agreement on this. we are having lunch in san francisco and it has been an exciting time for sf it relates to the 49ers. i will ask you your outlook, who

is to win the super bowl? >> i will not claim to be an expert. i will not vote with my head, but with my heart, i think the forney diners will win because i want them to. -- 49ers will win because a month until. >> you are sitting between two cal folks. >> 49ers by 10 points. >> lecture at the stanford graduate school of his next, and former director of national economic council under president george w. bush, and dr. christina, professor of economics at the university of california at wrigley and the former chair of president obama

's economic advisor. thanks to everyone in our audience and on the radio and television. this program has been's concert by bank of america. -- then sponsored by bank of america. we are officially adjourned. [applause][captioning performed bynational captioning institute] [captions copyright nationalcable satellite corp. 2013] quacks on the next "washington journal," patrick reis on the latest unemployment figures. andrew campanella a national school choice week. then, a talk about international adoption. that begins live at 7:00 a.m.

eastern time. >> as we talk about the movie itself, it is not a stretch to argue that "gone with the wind " is the most popular historical american film ever made. something like 90% of the american population has seen the movie at least one. jim cohen noted it became a worldwide phenomenon. the book was banned by the nazis, while the french resistance saw it as a symbolic representation of strength amid up -- occupation. after the vietnam conflict, it was used as part of a culture of exchange between the u.s. and vietnam. in japan, the movie was turned into a successful all-female musical. it is probably the single most influential interpretation of the civil war in 20th century popular culture. thegone with the wind"'s

trail of southern culture. that is on c-span3. >> today was hillary clinton's last day as secretary of state she gave a speech in which she thanked state department employees read john kerry has been sworn in as the next secretary. [applause] >> good afternoon, everyone.

madam secretary, four years ago, i stood on this same spot and had the honor of introducing you to the men and women of the department of state. from that first day on, you have touched the lives of millions and millions of people around the world, you have left a profoundly positive mark on american foreign policy, and you have done enormous but for all of us and for the country we served. we will miss you deeply, but none of us -- [applause] but none of us will ever forget your extraordinary leadership, and each of us will always be deeply proud to say that we served in hillary clinton's state department. [cheers and applause]

and so now it's my great honor to introduce one last time, the 67 the secretary of state of the united states for america, hillary rodham clinton. [cheers and applause] >> oh. thank you. thank you. oh. well, just, all of you, the people i have been honored to serve and lead and work with over the last four years, is an incredible experience. when i came in to this building as secretary of state four years ago, and received such a warm welcome, i knew there was

something really special about this place, and that having the honor to lead at the state department and usaid would be unique and singular, exciting and challenging. it has been all of those things and so much more. i cannot fully express how grateful i am to those with whom i have spent many hours here in washington, around the world, and in airplanes. [laughter] but i am proud of the work we have done to elevate diplomacy and development, to serve the nation we all love, to understand the challenges, the threats, and the opportunities that the united states faces, and to work with all our heart and all our might to make sure that america is secure, that our

interests and our values are respected. as i look back over these past four years, i am very proud of the work we have done together. of course, we live in very complex and even dangerous times, as we saw again just today at our embassy in ankara, where we were attacked and lost one of our foreign service nationals and others injured. but i spoke with the ambassador and the team at there, spoke with my turkish counterpart, and i told them how much we've valued the commitment and their sacrifice.

i know that the world we are trying to help bring into being in the 21st century will have many difficult days. but i am more optimistic today than i was when i stood here four years ago, because i have seen a day after day the many contributions that our diplomats and development experts are making to help ensure that this century provides the kind of peace, progress, and prosperity that not just the united states, especially young people so richly deserve. i am very proud to have been secretary of state.

i will miss you, i will probably be dialing ops just to talk. [laughter] i will wonder what you all are doing, because i know that because of your efforts day after day, we are making a real difference. but i lead in this department confident, confident about the direction we have sat, confident that the process of the qddr, which for the first time has enabled us to ask hard questions about what we do, how we do it, whether we can do it even better, because state and aid always have to be learning organizations.

we owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the president, we owe it to the american people. and so i will be an advocate from outside for the work that you continue to do here and at aid. so it has been quite challenging week saying goodbye to so many people, and knowing that i will not have the opportunity to continue to be a part of this amazing team. but i am so grateful that we have had a chance to contribute in each of our ways, making our country and our world stronger, safer, fairer, and better. those of you who are staying, as many of you will, please know

that i hope that he will redouble your efforts to do all that you can to demonstrate unequivocally why diplomacy is right up there with defense. it is because we are united and committed to do whatever is required to fulfill the missions we have assumed as public officials and public servants. so next week, i would expect that all of you will be as focused and dedicated for secretary kerry as you have been for me, and that you will continue to serve president obama and our nation with the same level of professionalism and commitment that i have seen firsthand.

on a personal basis, let me wish all of you the very best, whether you have been here all week, or 30, or even 40 years, pat. [laughter] let me give you the very best wishes that i can, because i am proud to have been a part of you. i leave thinking of the nearly 70,000 people that i was honored to serve and leave as part of a huge extended family, and i hope that you will continue to make yourselves, make me, and make our country proud. thank you all, and god bless you. [cheers and applause]quirks

many years ago, louis brandeis wrote that the most important office in a democracy is the office of citizens. democracy is rooted in a in the notion of an and lightened citizenry. some of us think democracy is defined as the ritual of voting. in voting, voting is important in a democracy. voting takes place all over the world. it takes place in democracies, in dictatorships, in totalitarian societies.

voting alone does not mean that we live in a free society. we live in a free society when it is based on an enlightened citizenry that takes that enlightenment into action, causing those whom we would elect to honor our ideas as a nation. >> author, activist, and transafrica founder randall robbie's and -- robinson, three hours live this sunday at noon eastern on book tv on the spent two. -- c-span two. >> abigail adams, wife of the

nation's first vice president and second president, john adams. c-span's new original series, first ladies, influence and image. their public and private lives, interest and influence on the president. produced with the white house that oracle -- his store coal association. and c-span, c-span radio and c- span.org. >> in his daily briefing, jay carney talked about the bombing of the us embassy in turkey, calling it an act of terror. he also answered questions about defense secretary nominee chuck hagel. this is 45 minutes. >> good afternoon.

happy friday. i have no announcements, i will go straight to questions. you probably have in your inbox, statements from the president on departure.o- chu's he is thanks for his -- he brought a unique understanding on the urgent challenge augmented by -- presented by climate change. during his time as secretary, he held my administration move america from real energy independence. we have doubled the use of renewable energy, dramatically reduce our dependence on foreign

oil. you can read the full statement at your leisure. i will go to questions >> does the president considered the attack in turkey to be a terrorist attack? >> a suicide bombing on the perimeter of an embassy is, by definition, an act of terror. we do not know at this point who is responsible or the motivations behind the attack. the attack itself is clearly an act of terror. >> the birth control -- is this recognition that the initial rules were an overreach? >> not at all. for details about the rulemaking process on which there is news today, i refer you to hhs. i would remind you of a policy that the president outlined last year.

in outlining it, he set two important criteria. one, we have to ensure that women have access to preventive services like contraception. the policy also respects religious elites. those criteria have been followed by the department in this role. as part of this process, there is more common that will be taken areas i would refer you to hhs. >> senator hagel came under harsh criticism from republicans. his performance is also pandas being lethargic -- hand -- panned as being lethargic. can you say how he prepared for that hearing? >> i will say a couple of things. we expect the senate to confirm senator hagel to the position

of secretary of defense. by my estimates and reading press reports, there has been a net increase in the number of confirmed yes votes for senator hagel confirmations and the hearing ended. in terms of the hearing itself, what struck me was the stridency of some of the questioning from republican critics, his former colleagues. the focus on a war that this president ended, over which we can all agree, there is disagreement. the president fully supports his views on this. they were the president's views. they were his views when he ran for office in 2008 and one. -- won. they were views expressed against a in a campaign against senator mccain. he promised to end that war, and

he did. in 2008, senator mccain suggested we might have troops in iraq for 100 years. that is certainly not a position that president obama subscribes to. and chuck hagel does not believe that is the right one. we can all accept -- the president believes that senator hagel will make an excellent senate -- secretary of defense. he looks forward to working with senator hagel in that position as we continue to advance our national security priorities. >> the topic from yesterday. today's jobs data shows the unemployment rate rising. it has hovered in that range for a number of months. the economy created jobs. at a modest pace. we had a report recently of contraction in the nation's

output in the fourth quarter of last year. there are people writing writing columns, calling for the need for a plan for faster growth, not deficit reduction. what does the president tell his advisers when he sees the signs of a sluggish recovery? what is he asking and the way of things to read recovery, create jobs, and stimulate growth? >> i will go to the narrow question first. every time he meets with his economic advisers, the focus is on job creation and economic growth. that includes when we had discussions about deficit reduction. as i have said, and as the president has made clear, deficit reduction is not a goal unto itself. it is a means to, if done right , the desired goal -- greater

growth, greater job creation. as part of an overall economic policy. i would note that today's jobs figures and the revisions we saw in previous months job figures mean that over 35 months, we have created 6.1 million private sector jobs. we created, in 2012, i revised from my remarks the other day, when i said 2 million, we created 2.2 million with the revisions. that means we have been moving in the right direction when it comes to job creation. what is also true, when this president took office, we were in the midst of the worst recession since the great oppression. we were hemorrhaging jobs at something like three quarters of a million jobs a month. the whole created -- hole

created by that depression is around 3.5 million. when we devise economic policies and negotiate with congress on how to move forward , we cannot neglect the research will -- the essential responsibility to the policies we put in place. promote economic growth. that is why, in every proposal the president put forward, every budget and submission to the supercommittee, every document she has placed before speaker boehner, he has included within his overall deficit reduction plans, specific measures to invest in our economy, to ensure that it w.tended to grow it pacifi the need to grow jobs in the infrastructure in the

construction business. if congress had passed the american jobs act, the components they refuse to pass. tens of thousands of people would be at work. at the construction industry, which has been rebounding as of late. if republicans had not refused to go along with it, the substantial job loss we have seen in state and local employment, especially among teachers, would have been addressed through the american jobs act. these are ideas the president insists be part of any and proposal going forward. >> john kerry is quoted as saying that the president offered him the job of secretary of state, a full week before susan rice pulled out. is that accurate? >> one, the president is very confident that secretary kerry

will be an excellent member of his cabinet and will serve auspiciously in that position. he also believes ambassador rice has done and will continue to do an excellent job on his national security team as our representative to the united nations. she could do any job in that field very ably. that is what you said at the time. she made a decision to withdraw from the process. we discuss it often, before you are in this chair, but i know you have covered it from elsewhere are. the absurd obsession i critics on capitol hill on the talking points provided for appearances on a sunday show, with regards to the attack and then ghazi. -- in then ghazi -- benghazi.

the president is very glad that ambassador rice is continuing to serve in his cabinet and on his team as our ambassador to the united nations. >> i asked, senator kerry is reading this out. he said the president called him a week before. he called me and said, you are my choice. i want you to do this area he asked me to keep it quiet. you told us from that podium just two days before rice told alex, the decision had not been made. who is right here? >> i would simply say i am not going to readouts civic conversations. i speak for the president. when he makes a decision, i announced it. that was the case.

>> any concern that kerry is rooting out of the conversations? >> no. senator kerry was confirmed by a substantial margin by his former colleagues and looks forward to what he expects to be excellent service as the head of the state department. >> there is a report that an exact replica of the oval office is being in the eisenhower building. is that accurate? >> i would refer it to the tsa -- gsa. i have no moving plans to announce. >> what is the balance that the administration is trying to strike with the proposals on contraception? >> it is reflected in the criteria i just repeated for you. the criteria that he made clear were important to him area.

we need to provide presented -- preventive services for all women. that includes contraception. we also needed to respect religious beliefs. that is the balance the resident made clear he wanted to be kept in mind as these rules were proposed and developed. for details on them, i honestly do not have details. hhs will have details this afternoon. >> you described what you think our changes and republican positions on the sick west air -- sequester as nakedly political. >> i stand by that. >> in 2011 he said i will get rid of any -- [indiscernible]x

that is out of context. when they worked together to forge the budget control act, some members were crossing their fingers when they signed on the dotted line. the fact is, the sequester is designed as such defense cuts, nondefense cuts. specifically to compel congress to avoid the implementation of the sequester by doing the responsible when -- thing and coming up with $1.2 trillion. that is what the president was talking about. there were discussions underway about, let us just remove part of the sequester. the part we do not like. that was never part of the agreement. it was disingenuous to suggest that was inappropriate course to take. the entire sequester is bad policy. it was designed to be bad policy, on defense and non- defense across-the-board cuts.

the negative consequences of implementation would be bad across the board. that is the point. congress needs to do its job. the president has put forward compromise proposals that would eliminate the sequester, achieved the 1.2 trillion dollars in deficit reduction in a balanced way. he looks forward to working with congress to do that. that is how it was designed. that is how that is understood. >> so the veto is a set issue. who you want to sequester removed or realigned? >> we do not believe the sequester should be -- unlike republicans who are now saying it is a good political card to have in your back pocket, that it would not be so bad if it were implemented, which contradicts scores of things they said last year, when it was potentially going to come to pass, the president continues to

believe the sequester is bad policy, and we should avoid it by implementing further responsible deficit reduction in a balanced way. the point is, i am not sure what you are asking. does the president oppose implementation of the sequester? absolutely. that is consistent with his position all along. have some of the republicans contradicted themselves and said the sequester would be fine? yes. >> you do not in any way wish to correct -- >> i am not going to get into private conversations between the president and a senator or cabinet member. i can tell you the president made an announcement. he had made a decision. he made an announcement. >> was the hhs announcement today prompted by the challenge for contraception? how would you expect it to resolve those differences? >> i would have to refer you to

hhs. i can tell you there is a process in place. there is a preliminary process, a stage in the process of rule making. it is entirely consistent with the way these things work. the rules themselves, the proposed rules, are in keeping with the criteria the president laid out last year. >> on the jobs numbers, there are indications from the conference that more people are delaying their retirement. and that is having an impact on youth employment. >> i have not seen those reports. i would refer you, and detailed analysis of the jobs report, to alan krueger's who writings on this, the chairman of the council of economic advisers. what i can tell you is, he is from 2012, with the revisions, but the average monthly job creation -- the average of each month at the time was 142,000 per month. we had 2.2 million jobs created

in 2012. these are private sector jobs. an additional 166,000 private- sector jobs added by businesses in january. a 35-month trend, possible job growth in the private sector. the president believes the need to continue to work toward recovery from the terrible recession, and toward further economic growth and job creation beyond that. need to pass laws that enhance the recovery, enhance job creation, the enhancement of security.

the position in this country for the kind of economic performance in the 21st century that the united states enjoyed in the 20th. >> i want to try one more on hhs. it said the new opt out would not expand beyond what was intended in the 2012 final. how can the administration guarantee that? >> i do not have details on these rules. the briefing on them -- i am not in a position to answer questions about the specifics of the rulemaking process. i think we are traveling monday at this point, they have all the information. >> discussions going on between the white house and congressional leaders. are we getting closer to the deadline?

>> i would simply say that our position, which i think is shared by many in congress, is that we need to approach this in a balanced way. there are ways to do this that would eliminate the sequester, would do it in a balanced way, would allow us to continue to invest in our economy and help it grow and create jobs. we will work with congress to help bring all of the about. the president does believe that progress needs to be made. if it is not, it may be viewed by some on capitol hill a sound political strategy to flirt with or allow sequester to take place. the president believes that is bad policy. we sought a 40-year record drop in defense spending in the fourth quarter that had to do in part with anticipation of the

implementation of the sequester. that obviously have negative consequences for gdp. we ought to get about the business of reaching an agreement on bounced deficit reduction that makes the sequester what it was always meant to be in, which was eliminated by better policy. >> the president has been in touch with congressional leaders. >> i do not have conversations to leave out. we are engaged with congress. we fully intend to make our views and our position is clear in the coming days. >> the president has been talking about immigration, gun policy. is he concerned that we will lose momentum on those issues as we get to be sequestered? >> these are all important issues.

the priority this president has is what he has always henhouse, which is restoring economic growth and job creation in this country to a place where we are positioned in the 21st century for the kind of economic performance we enjoyed in the 20th. that means recovering from the worst recession since the great depression. it means investing in the right areas of our economy to help it grow, to help it create and develop industries that provide well paying jobs to americans here, that allow us to address energy issues for the 21st century in ways that produce economic benefits for this country, that allow us to ensure that our kids are getting properly educated for the 21st century economy. that means making investments in education. it means trying to address the situation where even as we have

for 35 straight months in private sector job creation, we have for much of that time seen job loss in state and local governments. that is a portion of it. in education, schoolteachers, the president has put forward proposals. this is his highest priority. it is important to look at things like immigration reform. businesses have vocally and publicly, as an economic necessity -- the economic benefits of comprehensive immigration reform are manyfold and very important. that is the principal reason the president believes we need to come forward in a bipartisan way and get this done. there is every reason, both economic and otherwise, he to continue to make the progress that has been made, that we have seen. and get it done.

get a bill passed that represents the consensus that is building who, he that reflects the principles that are shared by the bipartisan group in the senate, and make it law, make it a fact. >> are there any changes in the way the white house wants to ensure that hagel is confirmed, asking members to come forward, perhaps? >> all i can say is what i said initially. by my read of news reports, he number of senators who have said positively that they will vote to confirm the senator as secretary of defense, has increased since the hearing yesterday.

and we anticipate and hope the senate will act quickly to confirm him and put him in place in the pentagon. >> in terms of the way he answered various questions, i know you took issue with the tough question style of republican senators. is the white house pleased with how senator hagel answered questions? >> i believe he did a fine job. if you look, if you take all the news clips, not the whole performance, but the news clips that have dominated television report and on this, they have focused on a series of exchanges that i think, by any estimation, largely represent the injuring over issues like, why did you disagree with me over iraq? we are prepared to say that senator obama had a view on iraq. it was one of the reasons he ran on that position and one in 2008 against senator mccain. he vowed to end the war in iraq in a with a protected our national security interests.

now, he is focused on winding down the war in afghanistan. someone bizarrely, and given that we have 56,000 americans in uniform in afghanistan, senators yesterday, in a hearing for the nomination of the secretary of defense asked very few questions about that active war. instead, they wanted to relitigate the past. that argument will be assessed by participants and historians. we felt comfortable about where president obama has spent and is on that, and where senator hagel has been and is on that. what he is focused on, the president and the senator, is on the challenges we have today around the world, national security challenges. they include afghanistan, a subject that got short shrift

yesterday among senators who were concerned about relitigating the past. we believe he will be confirmed. i think there has been an increase in the number of senators who have come out in support of him, not a decrease since the hearing. while the process is important, and it is a vital function of our democracy, the confirmation process, i would be stunned if in the end of republican senators decided to try to block the nomination of a decorated war veteran who was once among their colleagues in the senate, as a republican. i think it depends on what -- i think i addressed that yesterday. i think senator hagel address some of the questions about his answers on iran. ultimately, as i said yesterday, if we judge the regime in tehran by its behavior, but it's

a flagrant violation of international obligations, that behavior is certainly a legitimate. ultimately, it is for the iranian people to decide the legitimacy of their government. we deal with the government we have to do with. with our international partners, we have been relentless in pursuit of a policy that insists that iran give up its nuclear weapons ambitions and get right with its international obligations. their refusal to do that thus far has resulted in the greatest isolation that it has ever experienced, and the most punitive sanctions regime in history. again, you want to play a gotcha game -- if you want to ask me about a specific question our answer, i can certainly answer that. the senator answered questions

for hours yesterday, seven hours, eight hours. i think he conducted himself appropriately and well. the president looks forward to his confirmation as secretary of defense. >> a turkish high-level official said that the bomber was connected to a domestic group. the prime minister also ahead and said there was a need for international cooperation against terrorism first, what would your message to turkey on its terrorism problem? that administration might be willing to take target? >> this is an incident that just occurred.

i do not want to get ahead of it. it is being investigated. we strongly condemn a suicide attack against our embassy in ankara. it was stopped by our first security perimeter. details are still emerging about what exactly happened, who was responsible. it was clearly an act of terror. it cost the life of a least one individual, a turkish security guard, as you know. we will work closely and are working closely to investigate the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice. our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those who killed and injured. we appreciate the support from our turkish friends in responding to this tragedy. we have worked shoulder to shoulder with the turks to counter terrorist threats. this will only strengthen our resolve. with turkey has been an

important ally, broadly speaking, in the effort to counter terrorism. >> you have any sketches of the main message here? >> i do not have to the joint announcements to make or remarks to preview. >> is ed koch coming? and what is the plan for the super bowl? >> the president will watch it with interest. [laughter] i do not know who will join him in watching the game, although his bears are not in it. interesting dynamic, brother versus brother. we expect it to be entertaining. i meant to ask him yesterday -- i do not know who he favors in this matchup. absent his beloved chicago bears, he probably just has an interest in a close and good

football game. i just do not have any announcements to make about who is going to be there. >> the initial accommodation that was announced on the hhs mandate appeared to be a deal to appease progressive catholics that the administration had inadvertently upset during a very politically charged time of an election year. the accommodation we are saying today, february 10 last year, the president saying we would not spend a year doing this -- >> there was a process required to take place. there was an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking.

that is the kind of phrase you could only find in washington, but that is how it works. that is followed by a nervous of proposed rulemaking, which is with us today. in between there, there is work on the rule, which happened. in part because of input who brought in as part of the process. for details about how this bill which clarifies what we had last year, i just do not have the details for you. the president has been very clear about his views on this. he believes there are compelling interests, which are the necessity of and appropriateness of providing preventive services to women across the country, including contraception, and making sure we are mindful of religious liberty. he has instructed those who work for him on this issue to be cognizant of this criteria as

they develop the rules. >> if it was such a priority for him, why couldn't this have happened why year ago? >> you are talking about a rule making process. agencies develop rules, based on laws all the time. he answered questions about his views on it. there are very clear, those views. those views and formed the rulemaking process. in terms of how that has unfolded, the pace and direction is entirely in the norm. i refer you to hhs for more details. >> if employees and insurers are paying for the contraceptive coverage, isn't it costs being borne by other injured folks are taxpayers? >> you are asking me the details that hhs can answer for you.

i will do a little research over the weekend, if you want me to answer those questions, although the could be answered today, and down the street. the details about the rule making process are available as we speak at the department of health and human services. >> this is very controversial. i do not understand why the white house, "if you have a cell phone, you could go and call hhs now and get the details. i do not have them for you. is this "the daily show"? >> when is the president going to sign the debt limit bill? >> i will get back to you. >> the house says it will vote for the president to submit a balanced budget. what you think about that? >> the president has put forward repeatedly budget proposals that address our fiscal challenges, that bring our very important deficit and debt to gdp ratios

too high a level that puts us on a sustainable fiscal path, for a significant time. his proposals reflect the need for balance, the need to ensure that even as we bring our deficit down, but we do not ask seniors or families with children who have disabilities, or families who are struggling to send their kids to college, to bear the burden, so we can allow hedge fund managers to keep a loophole in the tax code that results in them paying a vastly lower tax rate than most of us in this room, and most every average american out there. that is a balanced approach that is broadly supported by the american people, and irresponsible way to reduce our deficit. it was endorsed by several bipartisan commissions who have addressed with their own

proposals the fiscal challenges we face. the president absolutely intends to put forward, as he continues negotiations with congress -- this was the prior to the primary subject of debate in last year's election. the american people were pretty clear about which approached the preferred. steve? >> 43 republican senators signed a letter to the president today, saying they would block any nominee for the consumer financial protection bureau, unless you change the law, the same stance they had in the last congress. i wonder if you have any reaction. >> it is unfortunate that a minority of the u.s. senate continues to oppose the implementation of wall street reform designed to protect the american taxpayer from the kind of crisis we sought engendered by the collapse of our financial sector in 2007 and 2008.

it was designed to protect the establishment -- it was established to make sure that the average americans who have dealings with financial institutions have somebody in washington looking out for their interest, because financial institutions, as you know, have plenty of people in washington looking out for theirs. it is unfortunate that republicans have continued their efforts to oppose this bureau, oppose the implementation of a key component of the wall street reform law. it is tough to explain to the american people, whose memories are not short, about what this country when through, and what taxpayers have to do to prevent the total collapse of the financial sector, as we dealt with institutions that are too big to fail.

who both the bush and administration and the obama administration had to make decisions that were unpopular, but necessary to save a total collapse. have fortunately, the taxpayer money invested by this address attrition has been paid back. but wall street reform was designed to make sure that never again would an institution that had to be unwound have to be funded by the american taxpayer. this is an important element of reform. the president urges the senate to confirm richard cordray to the head of that bureau. as the letter you cited demonstrates, he has substantially more than a majority of support within the u.s. senate. that should surely be enough for confirmation. >> the president is going to be giving his state of the union address, and many are looking to the leadership to implement the president's agenda.

he has had a number in the economic departments -- does the president hope to be able to point federal workers toward the leadership they are going to have by the state of the union address? can he connect that? >> it is a good question, but i do not have a timetable to provide to you for further personnel announcements. when it comes to cabinet service, the president's cabinet in the first term had remarkably low turnover historically. it is true after four years that there have been a lot of departures, and therefore spots to fill. the president is doing that in a very deliberate way, and will continue to make announcements as he is ready to make them. he will continue to do that expeditiously. and he will hope that than the senate and richard cordray will move quickly to consider the

nominations and confirm them who, as a corporate. >> i wondered if you had any reactions to the human rights reform announcement that was critical of the u.s. on immigration policy. the u.s. has the most people in jail in the world. also, "abusive practices" in guantanamo. senator menendez is leading the effort for reform. is the white house concerned about allegations that he is involved in a scandal? >> i have nothing to say about that. i would refer you to the senate. i am not aware of the report. i think the president, when it comes to immigration, has put forward comprehensive reform he believes is essential to the health of our economy and protection of our middle class.

he looks forward to working with the senate and the house to get that confirmed. he has made the fact that is a clarity of his very clear. i am not familiar with the report, so i cannot really respond. >> a military group, made a statement saying that senator hagel must use his authority to ban discrimination and guarantee equal opportunity for lesbian, gay, and transsexual members of the military. that seemed a foregone who during the confirmation process. the white house expect him to make this policy happen. >> i would point you to numerous answers the senator gave about his support for issues regarding lgbt rights, including service in our military. the president's positions on this are clear. he continues to intend to make

progress on this, as he made clear at his inaugural. >> on the benefits issue, when will these benefits be inactive? >> i think expeditiously is when they would get the attention, as senator hagel rightly answered, hopefully with him at the pentagon as soon as possible. >> the departures of cabinet members? >> i think cabinet members have made the decisions they have made, and had conversations with the president about what their plans are. how do you square the questions? one says we are way behind in filling these positions. the other says we need to get them all done quickly.

the president is obviously having, has had, and will continue to have conversations with the leading members of his team, including cabinet secretaries. >> are all the departures voluntary? >> i know of none that are not voluntary. i would simply say that the president, as you have seen in the statements he has made after some of his cabinet secretaries have announced their departures -- he has been enormously grateful for their contribution to a series of policies that have helped pull this country out of the worst economy we have known, most of us, in our lifetimes, and have pointed us in a far better direction. he looks for to working with those who will join the team after being confirmed by the senate. thank you. hold on. on monday, the president will travel to the minneapolis police

department's special operations center where he will deliver remarks and discussed with local leaders and law enforcement officials as comprehensive set of common sense ideas to reduce gun violence. minneapolis has taken important steps to reduce gun violence and foster a conversation in the community about what further action is needed. the president will visit with members of the community about their experiences and discuss additional take the camp -- discuss additional steps that we taken at the federal level. on tuesday, the president will attend meetings at the white house. wednesday, he will attend the democratic senate caucus mckeon in annapolis, maryland. on thursday, the president will deliver remarks of the national prayer breakfast here and in the afternoon, he will go to leesburg, virginia, to deliver remarks of the house democratic issues conference. friday, he will attend meetings at the white house.

thank you very much. and happy friday. have a good weekend. happy superbowl. go team. >> next, women in combat. economists from the george bush and obama administration give their 2013 economic forecast. a look of the 2012 political campaign season and its effect on legislation in congress. on the next washington journal, political economics and finance reporter patrick rice on the latest unemployment figures. alliance for school choice president on national school choice week. the head of the congressional coalition on the adoption institute will talk about international adoption. washington journal begins live at 7:00 a.m. eastern time.

>> from almost the found a, you saw the fertility rates decline. by the time we hit the second world war, we were around the replacement rate. immediately after, we have the only major incidents of increase attend our fertility rate. that was the baby boom. it really was a remarkable moment. the fertility rate increase quite high, 3.7% for white americans and 3.9% for black americans. it stayed up for an entire generation. it was a long-lasting effect. people change the way they lived for generations. by 1970, that momentum ended. we saw the fertility rate dropping off a cliff. >> on how changing demographics

of birth rates could cost the u.s. to lose its place is that -- lose its place as a world leader. sunday night at 9:00 eastern on c-span2. let us on facebook. >> now, women who have served in the u.s. military discuss the difficulties they face. they are joined by female veterans of the canadian and norwegian military. this event hosted by the stockholm institute and the service women's action network. >> all i can say is wow. it is really an honor to be here and hear the testimonies of those amazing women who are decorated combat veterans, but are ridiculously articulate answers here what their experiences were. i am honored to be here with this panel. all of these women are accomplished and through their lives and work, they have laid

the groundwork for lifting previous restrictions on women post a military service. they have been part of lifting past restrictions. and gender integration in the military. their full biographies are in the program. i will give a brief introduction. captain joellen osland was one of the first women excepted to navy flight school. she was the navy's first female helicopter pilot. between 1975 and 1978 she was a plaintiff in a lawsuit that successfully challenges you restrictions on women flying and serving aboard noncombat ships. she has remained politically active throughout her life. next to her is colonel martha mcsally.

as an a-10 thunderbolt pilot, she was the first american woman to fly into combat. she completed multiple deployments associated with operations. she was the first woman in u.s. history to command a combat aviation unit during active combat areas in recognition of her leadership, she received a bronze star and air medals. she continues to have illustrious military ends now post military career. ask to her is karen, a retired lieutenant from the canadian forces. -- i'm sorry, a lieutenant commander. the canadian structure is difficult for me. following her service in the canadian forces, she has become a defense on their behalf.

she has written several books about women in the canadian forces. she has completed her phd dissertation, "negotiating gender in the canadian forces." next to her is captain lory manning, she has served on many high-level staff. she is the director of the women in the military project at the women's research and education institute. she served for six years on the secretary of veterans affairs advisory committee on women veterans. she was a member of the military advisory committee at the servicemembers legal defense network for three years.

next america colonel ingrid gjerde, and active-duty infantry officer with operational experience in the norwegian army. she began active-duty in 19 87 and has ground combat experience to share with us. she served as a platoon commander in southern lebanon, a rifle company commander in bosnia and between national contingent commander in afghanistan, responsible for all norwegian troops. i enjoyed bronson smith, i was a former navy pilot during the gulf war era. i am now a documentary filmmaker. i am working about a film about the fight to fight. the evolution of the u.s. military in regard to women in combat. i think we should start our discussion talking -- we will do this more as a discussion. i will direct questions to the panelists around various topics. i think we should talk about the political climate. women in the military in different countries. we just had this announcement by

the secretary of defense of joint chiefs of staff, rescinding the combat restriction policy. it came specifically from the military. it came at the request of the military. things have gone differently in different countries. what prompted canada to remove the restriction on women in armed services? >> through the 1980's, the military was dealing with the requirements of our human rights act and the canadian charter of rights and freedoms which became part of the canadian constitution in 1985. at that point, and was considered discriminatory to treat women differently in terms of employment and a range of other things. throughout the 1980's, several women and one man submitted complaints to our human rights commission. none of the complaints related to combat, but to restrictions on the employment of women. either because there was a

minimum mail components, the women were denied entry, because there were enough women, or because they were only allowed to serve in certain units. one of them was an administration clerk, but she was denied deployment in a particular unit because it was considered too close to combat. one man submitted a complaint, he was a fighter pilot. he complains that men bore a disproportionate responsibility for risk in combat. the tribunal looked at these cases, they opened up a complete review of the canadian military and how it treated gender. they looked closely at the issue of operational effectiveness, the military sent several witnesses to the tribunal. they ordered the canadian forces to completely integrate women into all roles in the following 10 years. the tribunal carries the weight of law in canada. they were legally obligated to move forward in that direction.

>> how does it occur in norway? >> honestly, i do not know too many details before we opened in 1984. we have a society where equal rights for men and women is very deep founded. i am quite sure that was a political issue. at this time, there was such a small percentage of women in the armed forces in the other branches, which were open and the 1970's. that is norwegian society where every man and woman should be treated equal. have the same opportunities. it is never questioned.

>> what about in the u.s.? captain manning, do you think that here we look at the military as just another opportunity for employment? do we look at it as somehow distinctly different from business or other types of employment opportunities? >> we are all over the place on it. to the prevailing view is that it is different. in the u.s., what women have been allowed to do in the military, if you go back to 1901 when we started, it depends on what the military needs, what women are already doing, and mixed into that is a great big dollop of what society thinks emotionally is fitting for women to do. those things have changed over time. every time something new opens for women, even if it was

probably just moving from the desk to standing up in a file cabinet during world war i, it involves this whole political discussion. the biggest mess i have seen where things really erupted, was in the mid-1970's. people thought era was going to pass. the equal rights amendment, for those of you who are not worn then. the lawsuits out there by both men and women, saying -- and members of congress, saying it is time to open the service academies to women. that is the only change that i know of that has been made with respect to women in the military, but the service is fought tooth and nail. they thought women in the academies would defile it somehow.

if you look at the congressional testimony, one of the, i think he was the cadet commander, he said this is our school. if you bring them in, you are wrecking it. i heard the same arguments come in just last week on television. they are still out there. they are still very vocal. if you look back through the history, there is a whole political go around every time we open something. submarines happened pretty quietly. but for the rest of it, you are told the doom is upon us. a year later, it was like, what was the big deal? i suspect the same thing will happen here. it's what happened, 10 years from now, they will wonder why anybody opposed it.

>> you are both first wave women, let's take it chronologically. you were the first wave when women were first allowed into flight school. what was your experience integrating and the reception you received? >> the way the flight program was open to women was a little bit similar to what secretary panetta has just done. they kind of sad, make it so. there it was. in our case, it was the then chief of naval operations. he was probably one of the most forward thinkers that the navy has had. in 1972-73, he was taking into

account a number of factors. one of them was era, as she mentioned. the other was the end of the draft. it was ended in 1970. the navy had about a 10% retention rate following the vietnam war. the big push was, where are we going to find people? the obvious choice, as far as the admiral was concerned, was to start recruiting more women and get women in the services. his service was the navy. the way he sought to make that more attractive to women was to start opening up some specialties that had been closed to them. you have to think about what was going on in the 1970's. in a historic context. women were still being discharged for pregnancy, up until 1975. we did not even have uniforms that were correct for the jobs that were being opened up. when i started standing watch in

my squadron, i had to walk the flight line in shields and a skirt. it was two miles long and you did it several times during your watch. one day i showed up in enlisted boots and pants to try and walk the flight line, and i got blasted for it pretty good. i was allowed to wear pants with captain of the watch. the flight suits, the clothing was -- it did not fit real well. it was an amazing experience. i have to say, on the whole, the helicopter community was very welcoming. it would not -- it was higher up the chain of command. i was on the west coast at the time. as you got more senior officers involved, there was more resistant.

part of that was, i think, because of the way that the program was instituted. they did not give a lot of thought to an actual career path for the women. they thought it would be cute to have us around for a few years, then we would find a guy and get married and go away. then they can sit around and think about what was going on. it came as a shock for them to find out that the first few of us had plans to stay around. we had plans about how it was going to be handled. >> kernel, you had a slightly less welcoming experience? >> let me just say, among my other hobbies, his sparring with the bull on the fox news channel. yesterday was the most intriguing. you can go check the tapes. i would say that, in general,

but this is a leadership issue. this is about leadership, making sure we have the most capable fighting force. this is about good order and discipline. that is the bottom line. when they open up air force fighters to women, what it felt like on our end, i am not sure what happened -- on our end, they were like, good luck. i look at what some of what they have gone through the overturning of don't ask don't tell to make sure the leadership climate continued to be for the mission in good order and discipline. not complaining about it, but it appears that none of that actually happens when we trans ocean to fighters. they thought, let them go. if we draw attention to it, it will create more problems area did not true.

i knew it was going to be a rough environment. you guys have all seen top gun. that bastion of -- i don't know. it was challenging. i had three older brothers. i knew how to hold my own. i was ready for it. what i was not ready for was being ignored. i back was turned on me by my squadron commander when i went to introduce myself. i found out later, i squadron commander had a meeting with all the pilots and said, let me tell you what he should've said -- hey, we are about to get another pilot in the squadron who went through the same training as you, who is qualified and keep the ball and going to go to war with us. met all the standards. we have a mission to do, i

expect everyone will be professional. we are in this together. we have a long history, heritage, for what we have done in combat. we are going to uphold that. if anyone asked and professionally, i will cut your head off. instead, he had a meeting and said, the worst possible thing is about to happen. [laughter] i wasn't there. i am assuming my colleagues are telling me the truth. we are about to get a woman. that was the climate that was set when i first walked in. within a month, he traded out and i had a new commander come in who had the mindset that i first conveyed. luckily for me, we deployed fairly quickly. within a month of me being in my squadron, saddam hussein was threatening to come south again.

they wanted to bring in a squad quickly to try and determine that. so we deployed. there is nothing like a deployment to get rid of all the nonsense of people feeling threatened in their careers or whatever that is. i will say, in general, my experience -- when you get into your unit and prove yourself and show that you are capable, it is the same thing that the last panel is talking about. you are either going to hit the target or not. you are either capable or not. it is a single seat fighter. nobody else will fly the airplane if you cannot do the mission. if you prove yourself by your scores. by your performance. very quickly, my teammates in bank unit would accept me as one of the team. in general, the challenge for me and other women was, i was continuing to have hostility from people i had not met. people outside the unit. able, i do not know who they are.

they had interesting things to say about me and my capabilities. i think other women experience that as well. becoming a teammate, you are well respected, but you have some of that. especially for me, when i started to upgrade. it is one thing to be a wing man, where you are told what to do. then, you become a flight lead, that is another interesting dynamic. then you become an instructor pilot. then your trading other pilots. then i got promoted two years ahead of my peers. that was when some of the worst dynamic happens, when i started to succeed. all the emotions came in -- you are only promoted because you are a woman and the things that come with that. i would imagine in those units that still remain exclusionary, even though they may have women with them, there will be similar dynamics going on. it is a leadership issue is. from the top down. they need to make sure they set

the standards. they need to set the right climate. they need to hold the line on that. that should go just fine. the other thing i will point out, i know you have a lot of other questions -- i know it will happen again. i have seen it in the discussions in the last week. people will make an assumption that the standards will be lowered for you, then they are pissed off about it. it is all in their heads. it is just ridiculous. you would not believe the number of altercations and the officers club club i had over this issue. they just assume that, you do not have what it takes, and i am told that you will stay anyway, and that is me off. did you get a memo down the chain of command that says you need to lower the standards? no, but i know it is going to happen. it happened in the past.

don't try and be rational. don't made me deal with facts. -- make me deal with facts. when did it happen in the past question mark do not try to be rational. seeing it again, a conversation i had yesterday with an elected official. there is an assumption that the standards will be lowered that makes people angry and they take it out on you as if you do not belong there. you need to go into counseling. mental health is available. this is not real. there is no policy coming down doing that. we need to battle that in it is out there. >> i want to comment on this, because i very much agree. i think it is a fear about the masculine image of these ranches. we see that in norway after 20 years with female and disposition. many of our male colleagues have this image built up from hollywood movies. they are often very far away

from the truth. that is what they fear. >> i have a specific question for you. >> i ran the navy's pt policy for a wild. the entire time i followed stuff on women in the military. occupationally, i have only seen one lowered. it was the navy's test of flexibility. it is part of the regular pt testing. you sit on the floor with your legs straight ahead, you have to be able to touch your toes. extra points for getting beyond. we had to change that because too many men could not get extra points for going beyond. the thing that gets under their skin more than anything is the sex differential in pt.

i have never heard one of them complain about the age differential. >> i wanted to ask you as we talk about previous integrations, one of the things you are hearing now is the saying, if you open the combat arms to women, you will have fewer women interested in joining the army or the marine corps, because they fear those assignments and you don't want them. people said that before they opened combat ships in the navy. what is the truth behind that? x after your hearing what i heard in the first panel, i do not think there is a lack of interest. before 1994, when combat ships were open to women, navy women might to go to to see one time if they were lucky. my entire experience was when i was out on an island, running

intelligence. i just have to go out and them sometime in the carrier. i had to be off there before sundown. there was great fear in the navy that once we opened the combat ships to women, they would find they would go to sea as often as the men. that women would be bailing out, women who did not sign up for that would quit. it didn't happen. there may have been somebody that got out and, certainly, women and men in the navy and all the services have a family hole. particularly once they are married or have children. it did not happen in the navy. women are a much higher

percentage of the navy than they were active in 1994. they kept running, and in bigger numbers. >> along the way, a lot more women got out because of the opportunities were denied them, rather than offered to them. >> in the canadian forces, how did integration occur? how quickly did it occur, what lessons to be learned from the way it was implement it? >> in 1997, we could see it coming. the complaints before the tribunal. in 1987, they started a trial that was designed to determine if, when, and how restrictions to the deployment of women might be changed. in hindsight, people look back and say this was a natural part of the progression. put women into the combat arms. look back at what happens, it was very much set up to test the impact of women on combat operational units. an important point is, when we talk about quotas, critical mass, and we talk about goals, the crew trials demanded that a certain proportion of women be in each unit, so they could evaluate their impact.

what that did was grow the quota system. it created a series of perceptions around the motivations of women, the abilities of women, and that is in. the tribunal ruled that you would no longer have crew trials, just got on with it. the trials will no longer be used to evaluate, they will be used to integrate women. the canadian forces said, right we will change all of our policies. it was an administrative process and our headquarters. i 1994, they said, great to have integrated women and they have equal opportunity and liability for all women in the canadian forces areas except the part of crew that was supposed to be monitoring and helping the effective integration.

it was not happening. by 19 97, we had wasted a decade by possibly thinking that women could just get in there. the onus became on women. the women that were successful, they were leaders from the very beginning. they had to integrate themselves into the unit. by 1997, we conducted research and looked more closely at at the barriers and why leadership at all levels had to be engaged. it cannot just be the top saying it would happen. it had to be effective through every level of the chain. some of the things that the colonel referred to about preparing the unit. if men in the combat arms unit were not effectively working at the women coming in, they left it to the team to sort it out, rather than leadership shaping the team.

it took us a decade to get on board and actually get some effective progress living. much different today. >> thank you. the norwegian forces were already fully integrated when you joined, everything was open to women. i know everyone wants to hear about your experience as an officer. what was your role -- talk about what it was like coming up as an infantry officer in a fully integrated military? >> we still have some issues, all over. i am so excited for my american sisters in arms. this is such great news this week.

but, i also have to tell you, you have some hard work in front of you. after 28 years, we still have some issues we are struggling with. it will still take time until we can say we are truly fully integrated. my personal experience, i feel privileged to be able to have the jobs i have had. i have been very lucky to have the right commanders with the right approach to having women in their unit area i think, like she just said, leadership is vital. military leadership at every level, but also the political leadership areas they need to encourage females to come in to the forces. we are hard on those leaders who are not able to handle having women in their unit. i questioned those men who are not able to handle, or can't accept women, how are they able

to handle the missions we have? handling local populations where we deploy, and so on. this is important. personally, i have done this same job, the same training as my male colleagues. i recognize what the panel here said. it is all about being part of the team. one of my soldiers, when i was a complete commander going to bosnia, was interviewed in the media. i remember, how was it to have a female company commander? he said, i have not really thought about it. i never had a male company commander. [laughter]

that is all about being one of the team. doing your job areas my experience is that my male colleagues, as we are out doing our missions in norway or deployed, they are so dedicated about the job they are there to do. they are not caring about if there is a female next to them. the question is, are you doing your job or not? i felt support, i have really felt appreciated for the job i have done throughout these years. both as a subordinate, but also as a commander. we do have issues. as a commander, i have struggled with female troops that had a hard time with sexual harassment.

we have to work continuously to make sure that every individual in our troops, male and female, are handled like you should do. >> who have hit on some of the same things that the first panel hit on. being part of the team, doing your job, knowing the prison next to you is going to be there to take a bullet for you. tell us about your personal ground combat experience and what the characteristics are that you think are important to holding that in doing that job in the right way, regardless of gender. >> i am humbled when i listen to the former panel.

i have been in violent situations. we have wounded and losses. but i have a lot of the high intensity combat experience. about the characters, which i find important. very much what was mentioned from the former panel. it is about being calm in very tough situations. make the right judgments. is not only for me as the commander, that is the same for the troops. when you have a rifle pointed at you, you have to take this very quick decision to answer, to support the one next to you and all of this very hard questions. that is an important one. team, i absolutely agree about your team. when you are fighting, you are not thinking about the flag and your country and a very

important things. you are thinking about the comrade next to you. we are the team, we have a job to do and we had at her do it well together. >> something to add? >> i was going to add, as you just mentioned the issue of harassment. in canada, what became very important was paying attention to other policy changes and implementation happening at the same time. our soldiers in the early 1990s's, we had implemented sexual harassment policies. a strong message had gone out from senior leadership that there was zero tolerance. leadership in the combat unit feeling ill equipped to properly discipline and train and motivate their team, they were afraid of being accused of harassment. paying attention to other policy issues in things that are happening at the same time is

important for us to read >> i would like to add one more thing. what i find vital. having the right values. that is the same for men and women. that is what else the right culture in a unit. that is what you had to focus on continuously as a leader, or as the troop. that is also the vital thing to handle what we do in this -- not only the combat branches, but every branch. handling everything from high intensity to dealing with assistants. you have to be able to do your job in such a variety of tasks. >> talked about the nonphysical requirements for excellence.

but let's talk a little bit about the standards. a lot of questions will circulate around the establishment of standards. i am curious, the canadian forces, initially took a gender norms approach question mark >> the standards have to be gender- neutral. but they have to be job related. not physical standards that have nothing to do with performing the job. today when they are deploying, it does not matter if you are and it is strange and clerk rooted if you are deploying as part of the regiment, everybody does the combat fitness test together in preparation. everybody has to continue to meet the standards of their specific occupation. they are arbitrary standards. a certain number of push-ups. you have been working with the

australians? >> yes. a number of us went to australia. we shared some lessons we have learned. the two big ones that a lot of people experience question his critical mass, and the idea of training to do a job and not training to meet the physical standard rooted of course there is some overlap. >> physical standards, this was a huge issue when women were first taken into flight program. next year will be the 40th anniversary of the day i got my wings. it was very disheartening to hear, 39 years later that the issue was still upper body strength and bathrooms.

[laughter] i said to my husband, i am stunned that we haven't moved past this. it is still a huge emotional component with the physical standards. . .

where is her ability to have upward mobility. so we do have to work the standards in critical mass. >> i agree with everything else he said in the press conference, except for that. i'm not sure where that came from, whether that was a stray electron or whether that was under advisement, but it makes no sense. first of all, you don't need women mentors. any time you are talking about that language where you need women to be with each other, that's the wrong climate to be setting. i was the only woman in my

fighter squadron for a long time because i just was the only one. if they tried to determine how to put us in pairs, usually we are our own worst enemies. you are actually better off with just one or two when you get going. the reality that we needed women to be with each other in that critical mass was not how we've integrated women into flying. they tried when i was an instructor to divide students. i was the one who put the kibosh on that. like why are you doing that? just the policy or discussion of that creates resentment in the men. women have to be together at this time. well, when they go to their units, they may not be together. it is not smart all around. to the one on one comment makes no sense. you are evaluated based on your group and peers, not your gender. that evaluation language that somehow a woman would we looked

at by herself for promotion, unless there was to in the unit. if that is really how they are forming had to do this, that is the wrong direction. we need to make sure we are continuing to recruit the most capable force. we need to get out into high schools to get the best men and women for jobs. except those right standards. if you end up being the only woman in your unit, that is fine. it is a leadership issue. whether it comes down to bathrooms and showers, we have all worked this out. just make sure they have the right command chain to make sure that people are treated and mentor it and can meet her promotion like everybody else. 30 seconds in the physical standard -- it continues to be this red herring.

when debating whether to open fighters were women. it was the same. they don't have the upper body strength. i was getting ready to go to fighter training. i have just completed a triathlon. we have guys standing up saying that women do not have the endurance. i sat there, do not say nothing. finally, you can just cannot help yourself. like, do you want to go outside and talk about this? the difficulty, i am seeing this in the debate still going on, even though the train has left the station.

a lot of people gives this can get away with, you have been excluded from doing this. so you have not done it. and i have done it. therefore you can't do it. i don't know if you the nuances on tv. sure you've been in combat, you've engaged with the enemy, you've responded to firepower. that is different then sustained offensive operations. that is the language you are hearing right now. on fox anyway. right now, the strength it takes to engage in sustained operations. something that a woman can do. justin bieber can do it but venus williams cannot? [laughter] i encourage you all -- this is not about individuals, it is about standards and capabilities. yes, men, upper body strength, we have to treat people as individuals. of all the challenges we have had in the combat zone with

conduct and behavior of our soldiers. it has never been about physical strength. it is usually about discipline and restraint. strategic errors. we had no problem lowering the standards in 2005 in high school education and medical conditions and aptitude test and felony records. we had no problems lowering the standards to meet the force. our soldiers need strength and endurance. they also need leadership, teamwork, courage, restraint, wisdom. all the things we saw on that last panel. that is what makes up a strategic corporal these days. strength is one issue. get over it.

>> i agree with most of what martha said. but i think it is very important when we are discussing females, we are talking about very physical demanding jobs. you have to have a certain physical standard. it is very tough to be and one of these units if you do not meet the requirements. you had to leave -- in norway, well, we are so technologically advanced, we do not need the physical standard. that is not the truth. patrolling in afghanistan, it is still very hard. >> i totally agree. >> the other parts, i was concerned about the critical mass.

i think you will have a very hard time implementing females in these branches if you are obsessed by certain numbers. i am concerned when i hear about specific shares of women. i have been the only one for many years and it has been fine. i have a better time in unit with more women. it does something to the culture. i think you need a certain amount to influence the culture. we should not say we need pacific shares, but we should work hard to increase the number if we want to do something about the culture. if you really believe that as women, we bring something unique to the table. that is my approach to it. i could also mention one thing from norway -- we have this discussion with -- about our female troops about how

integrated they are in the units. some of them are complaining. they say, you put as in specific groups or specific barracks. then we are not part of the team 24/7, like some of the male colleagues reviewed. when deployed, it is not an issue. we live in the same tense, close to each other. in the barracks, one of our border units to russia, we have the female soldiers sleeping in the same rooms as their male colleagues all year around. in my batallion in norway, i

didn't want this, and we separated. and the reason for this is that when we are deployed, there is a rule, no alcohol. so we don't have all these issues. but the combination with alcohol, young men and women together, that's not always easy. when they came home from -- the few harassment issues we had, they were always combined with alcohol. therefore, i was a little concerned to have them sleeping in the same room. not the possibility to kind of lock their doors and so on. it is sad to tell, but that's the truth. >> the critical mass thing put me on red alert and i have been listening to that. particularly since i saw the

article yesterday talking about what the general thinks it means. i do not think they know what they mean by critical mass. having been on staff duty a lot and seeing the compromises that have had to be made to come to accord, to get all four of the service chiefs in line with the policy, that would put in there as a way of walking the dog back. those of us who watch implementation i got to watch very carefully, because of all the dangers that have been mentioned. it is in their -- i do not think we should send a 19-year-old to

a remote duty where she is the only woman in 26 miles. on the other hand, it should not be a barrier to occupation. we would have no female coast guard rescue swimmers, or no army people going through the separate leader course that the army sends some people through if there was a critical mass necessary. for the rest of us, we'd still all be back in the 1950's, if critical mass was needed, so that's the thing that has to be watched, i think. >> we have time for one or two questions. >> you started to hit on not sending the single 19-year-old female out. i'll admit, at 19 i did not know anything about the military or life in general. would you like to see navy officers and senior members moved into these positions

first, and then open it up to enlisting directly into the division? >> you know, i don't think there is a one-size-fits-all for this. i don't think you can come up with one plan and say that's the way ds it's going to be. when i was in the nafey, i was an enson, and i was the only officer sent with a group of 20 women right out of boot camp with no other training to a communications facility. i spent a lot of time in communications running around telling the chiefs, this is the haircut regulations, this is what the uniforms are supposed to look like. i think a lot of that has already been done. i do not think you can come up with a one-size-fits-all. you do have to look at where the unit is. i would not send one 19-year-old woman alone for there were no women of any kind, anywhere.

on the other hand, if i was not allowed to be the only woman, i could not have been the x.o. of the communications station i was at or the c.o. darlene was the c.o. of a navy ship, and she was the only woman on the ship, the first c.o. of a navy ship. so it has to be done individually and very carefully and with thought. but this stuff about one on one, that doesn't make any sense. it has to be done with common sense. it is situational. >> think you also much. this is very informative. this is mostly for the named captains.

i wanted to know what you thought of the navy's decision to integrate women into submarines. >> similar to the decision to put women in flight training, a little bit different. submarines require a bit more of a pipeline. there is a flight training program for aviators. it is a little more extensive or submarines. there is the quarters issue and the long times of deployment and underwater and everything. i think it was a long time coming. they threw up a lot of artificial barriers that have finally come down. i expect the women will do fine in submarines. it is an interesting

environment. >> change does open the fast attack submarines to women. that is where all the fun is. that is where people want to go. that is where you do the tactics. where you are engaged in the intel operations. if you want to be a submarine admiral, you have to spend time there. >> [indiscernable] >> all but stuff can be worked out with common sense. or a poncho or something. [laughter] >> go ahead. >> my question has to do with implementation. in a lawsuit ruled in her favor, it took 15 years before navy ships were open to women, and 15 years before combat aircraft to be flown by women.

it took another 20 years until the navy finally groomed a captain to be a commander. what are your thoughts, quickly, on how to speed up the implementation that you have to grow these young women at the private level up to be e-9's? ensons or second lieutenants to be admirals? >> i think that -- one of the reasons it took so long as you're well aware -- that is my husband by the way -- [laughter] and he did not lob that to me. but one of the reasons it took so long because of frankly foot dragging. if there was an opportunity to delay a decision to say we need more study that is how i see this critical mass thing. it is a great excuse to delay implementation. after the lawsuit, which was handed down in 1978, i would say

the 1980's was a peed of two steps forward, one step back, it was -- if they could make a decision that obstructed the implementation of the law then that is what they did. starting with the fact that as soon as it was struck down in the 9th circuit court they had a new version passed in 1979. that instituted the 180-day t.a.d. thing, which we struggled with until 1981. then there was the jag interpretation of things. 1650 didn't need to be as difficult as it was. it said women couldn't be

assigned to duty aboard ship. that meant that i was not anchored in san diego bay, i con hover over a ship. that kind of obstruction we have to watch out for. that is one of the things we have to be watched carefully. >> i think we have to caution -- we shouldn't be fast forwarding women to higher positions without the necessary experience that they need, because then you are setting them up to fail. so there is that piece. sometimes it just takes time. it took time when we changed the policy in 1993 for me to be a commander in 1994. that was pretty fast because i was older and had more experience under my bell. so we have to be cautious there. but there are things, as you have seen in the last panel. we had 280,000 women deployed to afghanistan and iraq. there are women that are experienced in combat that can make lateral

moves into positions that were closed from serving in right away. they can get the training in other words to fill the square for the qualification they need. we shouldn't have to start from scratch. in our case we had to start from scratch. with brand new fighter pilot, wingmen, move them up. in many cases, they should be creative enough to say we have females and enlisted officers that already have the experience. even though they weren't coded that way, let's move them over and give them the opportunity to move forward so we don't have to wait 20 years into leadership positions based on the experience they already have. and it is justified. >> i'm sorry, i think we're going to have to cut this discussion off here. i do want thank all of you for sharing your wisdom and experience. the discussion has clearly begun. as the colonel said, the experience is in front of us.

>> many years ago, louis brandies wrote of democracy. democracy is rooted in base. some of us think democracy is defined by the ritual of voting. of course voting is important in a democracy. but voting takes place all over the world. it takes place in democracies, it takes place in dictatorships, it takes place in totalifaria societies. we live in a free society when it is based on an enlightened

citizenry that takes that enlightenment into action causing those whom we would elect to honor ideas as a nation. >> abigail adams, wife of the nation's first vice president and second president, john adams. c-span's new original series, "first ladies, influence and

image." their influence on the president. season one begins president's day, february 18, 9:00 p.m. eastern and pacific on c-span, c-span radio, and c-span.org. >> at the bank of america's annual economic forecast, economists from the george w. bush and obama administration discuss the future of the u.s. economy as well as the issues of health care, education, and the federal budget. from the commonwealth club of california, this is just over an hour. >> good afternoon and welcome to today's meeting of the commonwealth club of california. i am matthew bombara,i'm president of bank of america, member of the commonwealth club. we welcome our listeners and welcome everyone to visit us on our website.

we're pleased to present the economic forecast named in honor of the late past president and board member. he also served as chief economist and vice president of the bank of america. today's program is sponsored by the memorial fund and bank of america. today's program will feature two distinguished speakers with their viewpoints. mr. keith hennessy who teaches -- dr. christina roma, former chair of president's -- president obama's council of advisers. and keith hennessey who served as director of the national economic council as assistance to president bush. as director during the 2008 financial crisis mr. hennessy was at the center of one of the most volatile times in american history.

he was a senior white house economic advisor where he coordinated the design of the president's policies on taxes, health care, pensions, energy, and financial markets and institutions, among others. mr. hennessy has spent more than 15 years for political officials. before his time in the white house, he worked on capitol hill to senate majority leader trent loth. -- lott. since leaving the white house he -- he has been a television comentator. he also served a member of the financial crisis commission. as chair of president obama's council of economic advisors from 2009 until september 2010

dr. christina romer was one of the four economics principals who met with mr. obama daily to design and guide the administration's response to the great recession. dr. romer played a key role in the administration's economic policy, health care reform, and budget policy. she is an expert in economic history and macrocommix economics,she is a leading scholar on the great depression the monetary and fiscal policy. she is co-director of the program at the national bureau of economic research. she is a regular contributor to "the new york times" and contributors to the bloomberg television.

dr. roamer holds an -- romer holds an undergraduate degree and ph.d. today, they will be in conversation with anna mock, who is vice chair of the board of governors at bank of america. please welcome our guests. [applause] >> thank you, massey for the introduction. i was preparing for today with my 12-year-old daughter. she had some observations. you have someone who is a publishing -- who worked for a republican president and someone who worked for a democratic president? she said how will they be in agreement?

they will share their views and they have different views and i hope we will have that. and hopefully it will lead to enlightening conversation. with that we'll start with some of the big events of the week. we had earlier the week the inauguration of president obama for a second term. getting into obama and the view there are a lot of questions on how he's doing and what the administration is going to do given what happened in the recent election. you can share some views given that you have worked for the president. how is the administration doing? >> what is true is that the american economy has been through a very rough five years. president obama has been president for four of those. it is a baptism by fire as to what he faced coming in. i think the administration has taken some incredibly important

economic actions, including policies in everything from the recovery act and helping us to turn the corner and health care reform. i think that will be important going forward for the health of the economy. all of those things. so i think he's accomplished a great deal. unfortunately, there is still a lot more to do and i think the big issue looming -- there are so many big issues from immigration reform to gun control. we got a sense from his inaugural address about the things he wants to tackle. the one thing he can't avoid is the fiscal situation. there is a lot that has to happen between the debt ceiling and what are we going to do about the receiver? some of the issues he has to face and the large long-run budget that all of us want the policy makers to come together and figure out how we're going to do with it. unfortunately, it has to be front and center to come up with

a solution of that. i hone it is. >> i think, first thing to remind ourselves of is that the impact of a president on the short-term economy is almost exaggerated. the president can have a big impact on the economy in the long-run large i will to influencing congress. we look to the white house and say what are you going to do about the economy right now? we have to talk about the jobs report and what is going to happen over the course of the next month. what is so frustrating you know that not much what you're doing does not have a direct link to what is going to happen over the next month. it is interesting about how the debate has shifted. four years ago it was about the

short-term situation. now, the economy is still weak, it is growing slowly but it is healthier than it was four years ago. yet, none of the discussion is about the short term it is about the medium term fiscal picture. unfortunately, i don't see us making any significant progress on that. frankly, any time in the next two years, i think they are at a stalemate. i think it will sort of be arguments with little progress over the next couple of years. >> let me jump in for a second. you said you wanted us to debate. i don't think the focus has changed to the median term deficit. i think it is front and center precise i will because it has to be -- precisely because it has to -- we have an unemployment rate slight i will below 8%.

if you're at a do more infrastructure spending or you're going to make the kind of investments in education that will put people back to work, the only way you ever get a congress to go along with you if you say let's make this part of a package to deal with the other long-run fiscal things. in dealing with some of this is making space to get more short-term recovery. >> ok, except that the -- >> poor anna. >> i want this, exactly. >> to move the needle -- if

you're pulling on the fiscal policy lever you have to pull from your heart. in 2008, president bush proposed and congress enacted what we called the fiscal stimulus bill. on the right of the aisle it was not forbidden to call it that. it was bipartisan and it was $150 billion pushed out over an 18-month period. we figured that was probably at least the smallest size you needed to move the needle on g.d.p.

right now, given the polarization in washington the likely scenario is that nothing happens on the medium term deficit picture. agreements is the long-term budget. but i think that is important not just for the long run but for today. i think it does increase confidence today and it opens up space to do good investments today. the other thing in terms of what the government can do? they do one of the most positive developments i think over the last four or five months is that the fed has woken up again. they were active during the crisis, they dialed back for a few years and starting in september, i think they started to say we're going to do more

and try to be more helpful. i think we're seeing signs of that and it is very important. >> can i hit one point? i'm not suggesting that she made this argument but i feel the argument frequently that because we still have short-term economic weakness, we can't make changes to the median fiscal policy. you can't cut the entitlements that much because if you do we'll weaken the recovery and things will be real by bad -- really bad. that conflicts the dates for implementation versus dates for agreement. we can reach agreement now on a deal to restructure the entitlement program. i'll tell you what,

if it solves the problem i will let you pick whatever date you want that gets you past the point that you're concerned about the short-term impact. if we're talking about restructuring the entitlement programs i don't care about the first few years. but instead what happens is, a lot of folks left of the center say we can't negotiate the agreement on the long-term solution until the economy is recovered and i think that is a false argument. >> that is not me. i think both of us would say i understand but i think both of us disagree with that. one of the most frightening thoughts is we'll let the next generation deal with the long-term deficit budget. it gets harder the longer you

put it off. so i am with you completely. making those decisions now i think is very important. i think where you differ from people on the right is being reasonable about when you phase it in. the last couple of years is we have to get the deficit down this year or we have to cut spending this year. in a vulnerable economy that is dangerous. i think it is more important to make the hard decisions, make your fiscal consolidations back loaded. to kick in gradually over time, think is the right policy for an economy like we have that is still vulnerable. >> talking about the short-term decisions. you talked a little about the fiscal cliff. are we going to be able to pay our bills this year? given your view about nothing can happen in two years. >> define pay our bills.

>> will the federal government be able to honor her debt this summer? >> so it is a question about the debt limit. >> yes. >> i think so. i think the most likely scenario is that a few months from now congress repeats what it just did. there is a lot of huffing and puffing and i think they do another extension. i don't think it is a long-term extension, i think it is a six months or nine months extension. i think the fiscal conservatives try to get some kind of concession on spending in exchange for that. that is not ideal. i think that is probably the most likely scenario. last week i saw urging republican to vote for an increase in the debt limit but

at the same time, be demanding that the budget process move forward. i think that as much as they there is increased liquidity risks we also have a tremendous solvency risk. right now, given the polarization in washington the likely scenario is that nothing happens on the medium term deficit picture. if that is the case, are you willing to live with that? i'm sure there are people in the government would love nothing more for the germans to give them enough liquidity for five years or -- and never check on them. if congress says i'm going give you money to keep you going and i want regular check-ins and i will see what you're doing. i look at the debt limit as the only tool that the spending conservatives have right now to

try to create that accountability. >> but you see this as -- >> think is the most likely scenario. unless a miraculous deal appears and we cut the debt by $1 or $2 trillion. >> the debt limit is a strange thing. we're the only country that we want money to pay the bills. it doesn't make sense. i'm going disagree with you here. he was talking earlier about an episode back in 2008, the banks were in trouble, the bush administration had gone to congress and say we need to put capital in the banks. he described, right i will how to congress turned it down and the stock market plummeted and congress changed their mind. i think that is part of what we're seeing on the debt

ceiling. the last fight over the debt ceiling back in the summer of 2011. it turned out to be a terrible self-inflicted wound. our debt got down graded. i think that is part of why -- even republicans who care very much about spending are nervous to use that as a bargaining chip again. we saw how damaging bringing into question the credit worthiness of the government. the fight should not be should we pay the bill? >> there is an interesting question about in retrospect if republicans leveraging the debt limit to get a bill that cut spending by $1 to $2 trillion going forward whether that was worth it? they introduced liquidity risk. if you don't cut spending we're not going to vote for a debt limit increase.

it worked. the president agreed to cut the spending by a significant amount. now, would you like that negotiation had resulted from not having made that threat? absolutely. but do you think it would have occurred? there's the difference. i would never be one to advocate that congress should not increase the debt limit. i absolutely think that they should. when this came up in the summer of 2011 i wrote that and they put that in the pages of "the national review" which is only read by the conservatives.

i was arguing against those who say let's look and creating a cash crunch. that is the wrong thing to do. congress has the ability to decide what they want to attach to the legislation. that is appropriate for congress to attach spending cuts to that. if you give your teen kid a credit card and the kid blows through the credit limit. you don't stop paying the bill. you pay the bill. those obligations have already incurred. you have on obligation to pay your bill. you don't let the kid keep the credit card and keep spending. what do you do? you do two things. you pay the past bills and you sit down and say we're going to cut your future spending. that is what i was advocating that republicans in congress do. that is of course you increase the debt limit but try to package that with fiscal discipline so you can make a little bit of progress.

on the underlying sol conveniencey problems. -- solvency problems. >> i absolutely don't disagree in the sense i agree we have to pay the debt. we have to pay the bill. the idea that the only way you got president obama and the democrats in congress to cut spending is to threaten them that is not true. that one piece of inside information is president obama really cares about the deficit. if there is something he noticed in the first two years when the economic crisis had to be front and center, the thing he wanted to deal with was the long-run deficit. the idea that he went on a spending binge if you don't make threats like that is crazy. the evidence is there that he put spending cuts on the table. he asked them for them to be paired with tax increases as well. there is more good will than people realize.

more agreement that we have such a big budget problem that will we're going to fire on all cylinders. we have to cut spending. frankly, we have raise more revenue. >> you're listening to the california program and our speakers are economic experts. mr. keith hennessy and dr. christina romer. we are discussing national, regional, and global economic challenges. you can find video online. there's a series of questions around employment and job growth. what is your outlook on job growth? >> i will start.

i think -- i will say i was here last year and i'm more optimistic this year than last year. we made a significant amount of progress. it looks like housing prices have started to turn the corner. if you look at household balance sheets we see that consumers have paid down that debt that weighed on them. i think there are reasons to be optimistic. i am fairly optimistic. i think we still have things weighing on us. i think the concern about, are we going to shoot ourselves in the foot and not raise the debt ceiling? or not come to an agreement on varies things is one of the main things that can derail us. i'm more nervous about europe

than some people. interest rates are down in some of the most troubled countries and their troubles are still there. we still have a risk to the economy. i don't see us heading off to a robust, fast recovery. i think 2013 will be better than 2012. i wish i could tell you that it would be really good because that's what we need. >> i'm not a forecaster. i don't even call myself an economist. i specialize in economic policy. i try to be a good consumer of other forecasts. one thing i learned from that is frankly i don't trust any macro forecast that goes beyond six months. i don't think -- they are just guessing beyond that. i think we probably -- at least i would have similar reactions. i am still concerned about the risks posed by europe. i'm still quite concerned about

the risks from things heating up in the middle east. the u.s. economy is repairing itself. we don't have at significant housing drag that we did a year or two ago. balance sheets are repairing. yes, things seem to be heading in the right direction. but i also think that people often make the mistake of confusing the level for the growth rate. i think we need to understand that even if the economy grows at 2% or 3% this year which seems to be the optimistic but realistic forecasters out there. you are still operating in a range of high unemployment. if our economic potential grows at 3% per year and you're actual output is growing at 3% per year that means you're not going to close the gap quickly enough.

one of the things maybe you can answer the question that i have not found an economist who can tell me why recent recoveries seem to be so much slower than in the past. this one is different because it is resulting from a financial shock. we don't seem to be getting the rapid upslope that you would hope in any case and that is a concern. >> i think you did answer the question. i think in large degree the reason this recovery is so different because this recession was so different. precisely a typical recession in 1982 the feds pushed up interest rates to get inflation down. just as housing got crunched in the recession and when you pushed up interest rates it came back. we started from a housing bubble but the fed was already trying to help the economy.

we don't have the natural drivers. it has been this hard, long process of repairing balance sheets, getting people over the fear and the uncertainty that was caused by living through something we haven't lived through in 75 years. that is a big part of why this has been slow coming out of this. >> my favorite word in that is flexibility. the more flexible your structure is, the more flexible your economy is the easier you're able to adjust to shocks. i fear the added inflexibility that has been created by expansions of government because they make it harder for managers and private firms to react when bad things happen. they tend to happen. >> we have a set of questions

around regulations, in particular dodd frank. a lot of business are financial institutions are grappling with how do you institute that? what is your outlook on being able to institute dodd-frank as it -- part of it goes into law? >> i think it is an important step forward. this is one of those cases having lived through a financial crisis which was caused by financial innovation getting ahead of our regulatory structure you have no choice but you come through it and say we have to fix the regulatory structure. i think it is well-known that the biggest part of dodd frank is not all the new regulations it is largely, higher capital

requirements for banks, higher equity requirements for all financial institutions. that makes sense. it is basically -- it is a market approach at some level to regulation. the best way to make sure firms don't take risks that we don't want them to take or that are damaging to the economy is you have to have skin in the game. i think that side of it, i think is going to be very good and we're phasing that in. i do worry a lot of dodd-frank was left to be filled in. all the rule making is a slow process, it does create difficulties for businesses. one of the things you do worry is it is a time when rules can get weakened or the basic principles are there but the devil is in the details. we need to watch that.

i'm somewhat concerned that we're not going to do enough as we write those rules. >> dodd-frank, small topic. [laughter] increase capital liquidity standards, good. completely ignoring two of the largest financial institutions that still cause problems and will cause taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, freddie mack and fannie mae. that is jut a big gape -- that is just a big gaping hole. the approach behind dodd-frank was higher capital liquidity. rearrange the chart. there used to be a group which was the treasury secretary. that group has added a few more people to it and changed the name.

it is pretty much the same people, they have slightly different tasks and i don't see that chart saying you smart group of people you are responsible for preventing risks. i don't see that is going to do it. my biggest concern with dodd-frank, there is a paper in england. it is about too big too fail institutions. it basically is pointing to the approach that was taken in dodd-frank. .

dodd-frank. it is saying look, the problem of the 2008 financial crisis is that the regulatories and supervisors didn't have enough information or the authority to do something about it. then when they did, they didn't do something about it. they need to give the -- them more power and tell them to be more aggressive. that plus increased capital liquidity means we don't have to worry about too big too fail institutions because they won't fail. the government can step in when an incompetent manager screws things up. i just don't have the faith in government that they can see it coming and they can prevent it. so the question is, we now have something like two dozen stoically important institutions, former i will known as too big to -- formerly known as too big too fail institutions. we have a structure that is like the structure we had with fannie and freddie.

nobody wants to acknowledge it and we're all hoping that these institutions won't fail through some combination of competent management and government supervision. i don't think you have that combination. what you are left with relying on when one of the managers messes up, when the regulators don't catch it in time there is enough of the cushion that you don't have to do another bailout. the thing i found most significant about this when the lead governor at the fed for implementing the measures for dodd-frank. he gave a speech and said, basically, we don't know how to measure it we don't know how to do this. congress you have to do it again. for the lead appointed by

president obama who worked for president clinton to say we don't know how to measure risk and we don't know how to address it when that was the core function of dodd frank. the law has been a failure in addressing the underlining causes of the crisis. >> i know you want to say something at that point. >> too big to file is a huge -- too big too fail is a huge issue. you get nervous saying let's shut down at a certain size. it is a hard issue which there is not an obvious solution. you are selling dodd-frank too short. beside all the requirement that are designed to prevent failures from happening, one of the parts was the idea of living wills. fm institutions are supposed to

write -- one of the thing the law try to make clear is we're not going prop up a particular institution if it gets into trouble. it has to be a way that it can be wound down that won't bring the system down. that is one -- if we can implement that. if banks will do this is an issue. but that was a piece of the legislation that we hope will be helpful. >> i agree. in concept i support living wills. it is a great thing to try to do. i hope it works. the question is, are you comfortable having a financial system where you don't know if the living wills will work and you don't know if they will work until you get into the scenario where it is being tested? in particular what i come back to, if you assume you can work

it out domestically. take one of these global financial institutions, is this going to work globally? when i think back to is leeman and barclays. where bernanke was trying to get the british regulator to approve it and the answer was no. even if you get all of the smart people in treasury to negotiate international treaties on this is how we're going to make it work across borders. if you get into the point where it is on the brink again, i don't think they can put up firewalls to say it is not my problem. i'm skeptical they can make that work internationally but i now they can. >> we have a set of questions

around health care. i know you can't talk about the economy unless talking about health care. you're views on health care, the impact of health care on the economy and how do we make it a positive impact versus a drag on the economy as we've had? pattern getting into a here. i will start off. health care is a huge part of the economy. one of the questions people often ask about the first year of the obama administration. why did you take on health care at the same time we're having all these other issues? the reason was health care is not just a huge moral, social issue also an economic issue. we have to deal with that is something that can be helpful for the economy going forward. if you ask, what is the

positive on health care? how is the economy doing? what is the sector the economy that is adding jobs? it is the health care sector of the economy. i think it is -- that's partly because it is a dynamic sector coming up with incredible innovations, the amount of exciting discoveries that are looming on the horizon are bigger in health care than other parts of the economy. that's the positive. the hard side is it is a complicated side. the reason why we don't leave health care to the private sector because it is complicated. we don't look at someone on the street and say sorry you don't have insurance so too bad for you. we as society is going to take care of that person.

that is what puts the government in this position. it was an incredibly important step. it is a lot like dodd-frank that the basic framework was sound. the devil is going to be in the details. we're in this 2013 on how we ramp this up and all the regulations that go in, the insurance exchanges so people can have a place to buy insurance at the start of 2014. that is going to be a huge thing to implement and that is incredibly important. >> my guess is every person in this room is spending a lot more on mobile telecommunication services than they did a decade ago. but we think that is worth it,

in fact, we all made that decision in our own lives. the added benefits of having a smartphone or ipad is worth the added amount that we spend. on the health care side, you have to make sure you are defining the problem correctly. on the health care side we have unsustainable health care cost growth which is driving slow growth in wages. employers are spending more on covering health care and less on wage growth. two, it has meant there has been a large number of uninsured. as it gets more expensive people can't afford it and thursday, it is bankrupting state governments. the problem is that president obama got this correct. he did not define the problem as we have too many uninsured. we defined the problem as

unsustainable health care cost growth. then i strong strongly disagree with his solution which is government financed benefit to a bunch of people. then increase government intervention with private sector health care is going to result in slowing cost growth. we got the expansion of access, by the way, mostly through medicaid. we have gotten that so the cost is built into the system. what we have not got is any kind of certainty that health care cost is going to slow. in fact, what history suggest the more you move the payment to a third party, the more that gets spent. this has been true with the creation of medicaid, it helps

the people in those programs but it increased the level and the growth rate of spending. it is true in private insurance as well. my fear is we have expanded access but if anything we exacerbated the growth in health care. i think is way to go is push the decisions more to the people who are receiving the goods and services. it is move toward consumer directed health care for routine services. then people can make tradeoffs and figure out, am i getting good a good dart, is this worth the cost? you don't want more spending or less spending. you want high value spending. you want to say i'm getting a lot of health benefit for this dollar. >> given the way our system is set up the consumer wants more and more. all that innovation has a potential impact of driving

costs up and not down? >> absolutely. this is where we agree. with the inefficients in the system but there is disagreement on to push it more to government or more to individuals will reduce the spending. the principle driver in health care spending is the adoption of -- we're consuming more and better health care. the new drugs are making our lives better but it means we're spending more just as we're spending more on smartphone services. >> the president made the containment of costs a big part of the legislation. he -- there were two parts, there was the expanded access that was the moral issue and social issue and a labor productivity issue. i did a study looking at the economic case for doing health

care reform. and part is making sure everyone has access to health care you have a healthier labor force. you don't have workers that stay in a job that is not a good fit but won't leave because they have a pre-existing condition. on the cost containment, again, we have to see how it plays out. it another one of these experiments. we don't have a lot of -- how do we slow the growth of health care costs? >> no country has figured this out. it did two things that keith should like. one is consumer directed -- the making consumers -- estimate decisions. one thing that was controversial was putting a tax on high-priced insurance plan.

they have few deductibles and no co payments. so one of the hardest sells for a democrat was to say let's put a tax on the high-priced plans to make sure that we still have some consumer choice. i think that -- or consumer decision making. that is important. the other thing that the legislation did was to basically say, let's try a bunch of experiments. let's try, you know, doctors will tell you organizing things is a way to encourage more services and not necessarily better care. let's try bundling payments and not pay the surgeon and the nurse and the hospital. but instead you are having a knee replacement here's the money and you figure out how to

get the patient well as fast as possible and make sure they don't come back to the hospital with an infection. those kinds of experiments are one way we can try to figure out what will work. it is a mixture of more market incentives and the bold experimentation to figure out what would work. >> this could be a two-day conversation. >> when i worked for president bush he proposed repealing that exclusion and replacing it with a standard deduction that did not create the incentives to have it more towards health care. it is on the left that forced the legislation to only tax extremely costly plans. i agree there.

but, what led us to the broader fiscal question to entitlement spending. the argument made in 2009 by the administration was, yes, we have growth in the entitlement programs. second point, that growth is all about health care costs. don't worry about social security. if you look after 2050 health care costs are too high. tore not going to make it 2050. demographics are a bigger driver than health care cost growth. that argument was used by the administration to take social security out of the entitlement discussion. ok, now we are focused of on health care cost growth. what is the solution? the solution proposed was to

expand access to taxpayer subsidized insurance. then try to set up experiments that might allow the government to figure out ways to reduce the number of services that each person is using. the increased costs are going to occur. those are locked into law and it would be difficult for anyone to come in and undo them. we've added in the certain cost growth for the federal government. we now have three big health care entitlements, medicare, medicaid, and the affordable care act subsidies. on the other side, if they thought the experiments were going to work, then we would expect the government actuaries to be lowering their forecast for government health care costs. they have not. if you look at what the government actuaries are now saying will happen about federal health care spending, the problem is just as bad or even worse as it was before the law was enacted. what we were told was, you do

not have to fix social security. the affordable care act will fix our health care problem. now we fixed that. now they are saying, now we need to do some other unspecified health care reforms. that is a problem. >> first of all, nobody ever said that we didn't have to do anything about social security. where the description has always been is that the problems in social security are more manageable, and it has a deficit, if you look over the next 75 years, but reasonably, there are sensible changes that we can understand and deal with that one. there is a lot support, if you look in the simpson-bowles proposal, many people say, yes, we should deal with that. the affordable care act was not supposed to solve all of our entitlement programs. it was a mixture of, we have a problem of 40 million americans who do not have health insurance, who do not have the

necessary access to health care, and we want to fix that. what the president promised is that he would do it in a way that did not increase the budget deficit by a dime. he did that by raising some revenues, by cutting other kinds of spending, parts of medicare and medicaid that he thought were not efficient and could be dialed back, and by putting in these measures that we thought would help to slow the growth rate of health care costs over time. what the medicare actuaries are projecting -- one of the most important things is, at the time, the congressional budget office looked at what we were doing, and one of the most important things they said was, you have to have a tax on high- priced plans or we will not say it will be a sensible, fiscally responsible thing to do. the legislation very much was geared towards slowing the growth rate of costs. experts at the time were saying, it looks as though, we think they are doing the kinds

of things that will make a difference. >> there is a technical and important point. there's the difference between reducing the deficit and slowing government health care spending. if we set aside debate about the cbo getting their scoring correct, and we take as a given that the cbo is correct, what cbo said is that the bill reduces the deficit. it did not say that it slows health spending, or reduces health spending. it reduces the deficit, even though it increases government health spending, and it reduces the deficit because it has tax increases that are bigger than the increases in spending growth. to the extent that our medium and long-term problem is driven by demographics and the growth of health care spending, the law has made the second of those worse. >> you are absolutely right. there is no question that we

expanded coverage to millions of americans. the number was 32 million people who will have health insurance that did not have before. that is obviously not free. everybody understood that it came with the cost. it was paid for in part by tax increases and cuts in other government health care spending. it was not all on the revenue side. the other thing that is so important was that the congressional budget office said that it would not only reduce the deficit in the first decade, but you look out in the second decade, we think it will reduce the deficit even more. they were in fact giving credit and thinking it would slow the growth rate of some of the health care spending. i think that is an important point. >> let's switch to another passionate topic -- education. we had quite a few questions from the audience on how much can we afford to find and where should we be spending and investing in the educational system? a comment on whether it is done

on the national level or state level, where we should be focused on in terms of funding? >> let's mix it up. you go first. >> i have read that test scores of american elementary and secondary educational students have not increased since the famous nation at risk report in the 1980's, even though per capita spending on education has increased dramatically. i question whether the solution to the problem is, let's take our elementary and secondary education system and pour more money into it. it is hard to argue against, let's spend our money because that cannot possibly hurt, but it seems to me that you basically have major structural flaws in the way the system is organized in that it is not producing results we need.

i strongly believe, after entitlement spending, i would put the quality of our elementary and secondary educational outcomes as the greatest long-term threat to america's economic strength. i think it is the most important thing. i think it has to do with structural flaws that are largely tied to having a system still modeled after the one-room schoolhouse of the 19th century. >> more investment and spending is not your -- >> i do not think that is the solution. i think teachers' unions are preventing the kind of experimentation that you need to figure out how to in fact improve educational outcomes. i think that they are incredibly effective at doing that at the local, state, and federal level. what is fascinating is that when i talk to or read a bunch of the educational reforms and they all sit around arguing, and arguments go like this -- if

i did not have the teachers' union prevented me from doing my reform, here is what i would do, and it would fix the system. you have three reformers, and they all began with that premise. if the teachers' union were not preventing me from doing my reform, then my reform work. they argue about whose reform is better. they all start with the same thing, which is that none of them can compete in their ideas because they all face the same hurdle. i do not think we know which of these structural reforms is actually the one that will lead to better outcomes. i think we do know that none of that experimentation is being allowed because of the stagnation in the system. it is holding everybody back. >> one place it is being allowed and encouraged is through some of the programs that president obama put in with the recovery act and has tried to continue. the race to the top program -- when we were designing recovery act, one of his priorities was,

we're spending this money, let's do things to help the economy in the short run, but let's also do things that are good for the long run health. we did a bunch of money just to state and local governments to say, you're in trouble, you do not cut services, here is some money. a chunk of it was held back for the race to the top program, which was precisely a competitive grant program, and one of the key parts was rather than viewing the teachers' union as an adversary, can a community get the union and the administration and parents all together with a proposal, and if they could come up with something, they got government money. that is a model for how -- rather than just demonizing the teachers' union, to say, how can we bring them in to work together? and government spending, one of the things where the economic evidence is strongest is on the value of spending at very young ages. some of the research done at the university of chicago --

not usually a hotbed of liberal ideas, especially on economic side -- investments in really young children, those interventions done when there one, two, three years old, do seem to have a real value, even in test scores, graduation rates, things like that. that is one place where i would be looking for spending more money, and even in tough budgetary times, you do not cut everything. you say, where is the good money? >> a focus on preschool. >> even earlier interventions. get the at-risk mothers when they are pregnant and were put them. when the children are infants, teaching them better how to nurture their children so they can succeed. >> thank you. let's talk about the california economy. is governor brown doing a good job with our economy? are we stabilized now in terms of the economy and poised for growth? >> you're going to have to do

this one. [laughter] >> i think governor brown has done a remarkable job. the california economy was hit very hard by the recession. we happen a big collapse in our house prices, we had state revenues that are very sensitive to the state of the state economy, and so california, i can tell you when i was in the government, the number of times i said, we have full faith that california will deal with its problems, because god, we were praying that california would deal with its problems. it was a state that was in great distress. the change that we have seen over the last four years has been incredibly positive. the state is still in trouble. our unemployment rate is still close to 10%. there is not any sense we are out of the woods. what is i think so remarkable is the degree to which the

governor was able to cut spending -- believe me, being at the university of california, we know that spending got cut. we sought every single day. he made the case to voters. he said, i am willing to cut spending, here is a net spending will cut, and my question is, you want me to cut spending, or do you want me to raise your taxes? it was remarkable to the degree that he explained that and the degree to which the voters said, we are willing to tax ourselves for seven more years because we do not want the state services cut. i think that has been a remarkable achievement. the idea that this state that was a fiscal basket case four years ago is looking at a balanced budgets going forward -- i think that is really important. i give the governor a lot of credit. >> i am not well qualified to comment on the california- specific questions. briefly, there is a very useful

lesson here, which is that we should care about the state and federal level. we should care about the deficit, the difference between what a government spends and what the government collects in revenues -- extremely important. we should also care about the size of government. we should care about both. but we have done is that we have eliminated concerns about the deficit -- done that to a large extent by increasing the size of government for the tax burden. the bigger government is, your resources there are four california families and california businesses to do what they want to do with them. you have got to take both of those into account. i think that one of my concerns is if we simply say, look, deficits are not a problem, everything is better, what we are ignoring is that other dimension, because in reality,

decision makers are making two decisions -- when deciding about deficits, they are allocating resources overtime. they're deciding, are we going to decide to borrow from our state's future income tax to go, when they are deciding on the size of government, they are allocating resources between the public and private sector, and they're making decisions about how efficient the state economy is and how much it will grow. i cannot answer on the specifics and california future gdp growth. >> wanted to say that i feel the remarkable thing is the degree to which the california voters said, we have a view about what size of government we want. there are services we do not want to see cut, like education, like social services, and so we are willing to tax ourselves. that is the right way to make these decisions, to let the voters decide. >> they did not decide to tax themselves. they decided to tax the rich guys in the corner. >> as a collective group, that was what was decided. unfortunately, we have reached

the point in our program where there is only time for one last question. i think this question you may be in agreement on, but i'm not sure. given that we are having lunch in san francisco and it is an exciting time for all of us as it relates to the 49ers, i will ask you your outlook, who is going to win the super bowl? [laughter] i will let, ladies first. >> i will not -- i will definitely not cling to be an expert. i will not vote with my head, but completely with my heart, which is i'm going to think the 49ers will win because i want to win. [applause] >> mr. hennessy? >> stanford will again beat cal. >> not fair. >> you're sitting between two cal folks here. [laughter] [applause] >> i got to go last. they will again make it to a bcs bowl game. let's hear it for david shaw. the niners by 10 points. [applause]

>> ok, on that note, our thanks to mr. keith hennessey, a lecturer at the stanford graduate school of business school and stanford law school, and former director of the national economic council under president george w. bush, and christina romer, a professor of economics at the university of california at berkeley and the former chair of president obama's council of economic advisers. a special thanks to everybody. now, the meeting of the commonwealth of california, the place where you are in the know, is officially adjourned. eight [applause] -- [applause] >> next on c-span, a look at the 2012 political campaign season

and its effect on legislation in congress. in all veterans discuss the pentagon's decision to end the ban on women in combat roles. the board clinton gives her farewell address at the state department. on the next "washington journal," patrick rice on the latest unemployment figures. alliance for school choice and you're on national school choice week. ahead of the congressional coalition on adoption institute kathleen strut and will talk about international adoptions. "washington journal" begins live 7 eastern. >> as we talk about the movie itself, it is not a stretch to argue coat gone with the wind to go is the most popular american historical film ever made. a one light 20 europe -- 20th century estimate, at least 90% of americans have seen it at least once. it became a worldwide phenomenon

as well. the book was banned by the nazis, while the french resistance sought as a symbolic our present condition of strength and its occupation. the movie was among two funds requested by defense leaders after the vietnam conflict as part of a cultural exchange between the u.s. and vietnam. in japan, the movie was turned into a successful all female musical. the movie is probably the most significant, the single most influential interpretation of the civil war in 20th century popular culture. >> "gone with the wind"'s portrayal of history. on american history tb on c-span 3. >> today, a panel at georgetown university law center looked at the 2012 campaign and what lessons can be applied to the 113th congress. we'll hear from the nra's grass- roots director discusses the politics of gun control and representatives from the league of conservation voters, the

service employees national union, and the group freedom works. this is an hour and 15 minutes. >> welcome back. we are now going to begin our second panel of our symposium. our first panel was about and featured the political operatives in their view of the 2012 election cycle. it's lessons for the 113th congress. their work was done -- they're intensive work was done during the 2012 election cycle, but as we heard, they are gearing up for the 2014 election cycle. campaign managers for the 2014 election are being hired. if you want to be part of that process, and i still have a resume to dust, i would encourage you to rapidly dust. we are moving to our second panel, which is about the interest groups which are going to influence the direction of

legislative activity in the congress during the 113th congress. for my new colleagues on this panel, one of the analytical frameworks we use at georgetown law is what i call lp4. i means -- analyze things in terms of five aspects. look at an issue at the intersection of law and policy. l is law. the first p is process, which produces the law. the next p is policy. policy drives the process, which produces the law. the next p is politics. sometimes that is tough to disaggregate from policy. if we define politics as the acquisition, maintenance, and use of power, that is distinct

from the substantial policy issues. the final p is personality. individuals matter, some individual personalities, especially so. it influences the entire flow. we will hit on a number of these aspects of the law policy intersection. as we talk with the expert individuals who represent a number of interest groups that are tremendously influential to the flow of law and policy in washington, and the congressional article i process. to my immediate right is sara chieffo. she is the legislative director for the league of conservation voters. the league works to turn environmental values into national priorities.

sara chieffo plays a role in the production of the league's national environmental scorecard, which has been the nationally accepted yardstick to rate congress on environment and energy issues. welcome, sara. i thank each member of our panel for providing bio. we have david kirby from freedom works. he is vice president of development at freedom works. freedom works has done itself a great service with its name. it has to be one of the better organizational names around town. it works on a number of level. it produces freedom.

freedom works. i say congratulations to you on that. we need something kind of crisp like that. david is vice president of development at freedom works managing their fundraising operations. he is also a policy analysis at the cato institute. he is the author of a number of publications and studies with regard to libertarian voting habits in the age of the obama administration and current politics. welcome, david. brandon davis, from the service employees international union, seiu. brandon is the national political director. seiu represents over 2 million workers in healthcare, public and, property services.

brandon leads the organization's political program. he is tasked with mobilizing union members to win key elections while building political infrastructure across the country to create real policy change with a focus on working families. prior to coming to seiu, he worked on electoral campaigns. he worked on senator claire mccaskill's campaign for victory. we have glen caroline joining us from the national rifle association. he is the director of grassroots division. he implements the nra political and legislative grassroots programs and the campaign operations, voter registration drives at the national, state, and local levels. mr. caroline is responsible for the recruitment, training, and

mobilization of the election volunteer coordinators nationwide. since the 2008 election cycle, glen caroline has hired, trained, and supervised 627 field representatives. welcome, glen. we will follow the same format that we did before. each of our panelists will have eight minutes to lay out their initial thoughts for our discussion. then, we will have 20 minutes or so of moderated discussion. then, we will go to q&a from our community here today. with that, sara chieffo. >> thank you so much, dakota. can folks hear me all right? ok. thank you for that kind introduction. it is a pleasure to be back here.

in addition to serving as the legislative director for the league of conservation voters, i am also an alum of georgetown university. the league of conservation voters' mission is to turn environmental values into national priorities. since 1970, we have been advocating for sound environmental policies, electing pro-environment candidates who will implement such policies, and growing our national network in over 30 states. i will cover two main topics for you guys. i look forward to a lively discussion with my colleagues on this panel. i will cover the main lessons from the 2012 cycle from the league of conservation voters' perspective and talk about what those lessons mean looking ahead to the 130th congress that has just begun and what it will do for the obama administration second term.

the first main lesson is that voters sent a clear and strong message that they want members of congress to stand up for the environment and for public health. we pulled our resources on a focused set of races. we won bigger than ever. despite the millions that were spent by outside groups backed by polluting industries, we saw the president reelected, the senate become more pro- environment, which was quite a tall order. we saw a handful of house republican incumbents who were climate change deniers deseeded for those positions. let me give you some stats on the electoral work that we engaged in and the 2012 cycle. lcv spent over $14 million this cycle. that is more than the last three

cycles combined. we also raised our contributed more than $2 million to pro- environment candidates. we won 15 out of 17 of our target races, including seven new climate champions to the senate. reelecting senators who voted to defend the environmental protections agency's ability to take actions on global warming. millions were spent on tv ads attacking there records. those ads were not successful. we also helped elect two governors in tight races, in montana and in washington state. governor ensley may be the greenest governor in the nation ever. in the house, we launched a electoral process called the flatter five. we targeted five incumbent representatives for being climate change deniers. we defeated four of those five and nearly knocked out all five. we think that program

demonstrated that being a climate change denier is not just that policy. it is that politics as well. we also reelected the president with the help of over lcv 10,000 members who volunteered. in the presidential campaign, romney's opposition to the wind industry played a key role in swings states like colorado and iowa. we defeated two anti- environment candidates in the primary, in pennsylvania and texas. they were targeted for their opposition to climate change and clean energy legislation. lcv has a signature list call our dirty dozen list. we target some of the heaviest polluter candidates for defeat. we defeated 11 of those 12. that is quite a return on our investment. it represents the most successful year.

in the senate, we continue to see a firewall in the senate of pro-environment candidates and senators who will act as a firewall against assaults on the environment that we anticipate will continue. the second main take away was that the message beat the money. we were dramatically outspent by karl rove and big polluters. we had the public on our side. voters wanted leaders who confront the challenge of climate change. we saw attacks on senators in montana and ohio on their energy policies. we saw attacks from mitt romney, heather wilson in new mexico. those attacks proved

unseccessful. the omney -- money spent on the affiliated crossroads organization -- the millions that was spent was spent on winning races. you contrast that with the record i'm sharing with you today our organization 83% of the money we spent was on winning races. one great example of that was in massachusetts where we ran accountability ads on scott brown on his environmental record and ties to the big oil companies both taking money on an campaign side and voting for taxpayer handouts to those industries that are making near record profits at the pump. pre and post polling from those ads showed that his record dropped among independent a shocking 21%. so i offer that as an anecdote

of powerful the ties are in terms of public mind of who they trust in elected office and who they are taking their money from and whose bidding they are doing. folks want to know more about our work you can check it out at our website. i got some copies of our elections report in back if you would like to take them at the end. you don't have to take my word for our success source i can offer two quotes from senators we worked with. senator elizabeth warren said they did an incredible job of educating voters about scott brown's ties to big oil. that was essential in my victory. when carl rove started pouring money into new mexico to defeat me, they pushed back to help sure we won this race. so pretty powerful endorsements from races where we worked. let me close with a few forward

looking comments on the second obama term. sp despite these electoral victories, we believe congress is a dysfunctional place to do business and we think advancements in congress on environmental policies are slim. that means the main opportunity for forward progress in the next few years with the president authority through executive action he can take. we anticipate that we'll continue to see pretty broad and sweeping attacks on our air, our water, our land, our wild life from the boehner led house of representatives and in the senate we anticipate our senate allies will stand strong against these misled attacks. as i said, this election cycle demonstrated there is strong support for addressing climate change. this is heightened in the wake

of super storm sandy and this being the hottest year on record for our globe. we are going to see further action on climate change coming from the president in his second term which he made a commitment in his speech in tackling climate change. now the president possesses some very powerful tools to make progress on the climate crisis. much of that authority stems from the environmental protection agency's role in implementing and enforcing the clean air act. it's been affirmed by the supreme court. the president's first term took several actions to reduce pollution from cars and trucks and doubling our nation's renewable energy sources. they proposed first standards to reduce pollution from power plants. that is in draft form without

for public comment and had a record breaking 3 million comments in support that exceeds any other. and we think it non-straits the public appetite for strong action on climate change. we are pushing for standard producing carbon producing from power plants to be announced soon and finalized with all due haste. power plants are our nation's single largest source of carbon pollution representing 40% of our nation's annual contributions. we are encouraged by the comments from the president's comments in his inaugural address. another lesson we think will bear on this 113 congress is that the public strongly supports the e.p.a. scientists doing their job protecting the air we breathe and water we drink. we hear talk in this town of e.p.a. run amuck or gone too

far. when we look at this issue across the country, voters trust them to do this job of protecting the air we breathe and water we drink and expect them to do. so the people they don't trust to do this is congress, especially members of congress who are taking campaign contributions from polluting industries. this is widespread, it's not just the bigger metropolitan areas. we did polling areas in 32 swing districts across the nation and found across the southeast, midwest there is a strong support and trust in the e.p.a. and their scientists. another lesson we think will hold an impact on what happens this congress is that politicians who take money from big oil companies and vote to protect their taxpayer handouts are on dangerous ground. we anticipate we will continue to see in this series of budget and spending and sequestration fight that is will dominate much of the discussion here inside the beltway.

we will continue to see the president and allies in congress call for an end to these harmful handouts in our nation's largest oil companies. we've seen strong support for clean energy and energy efficiency investments. it's a chance for forward progress on in building our economy and moving ahead from the 21st century. so we anticipate that we'll continue to see calls for expanded investments in energy. and energy efficiency is where we've seen bipartisan support and we're hopeful for progress. there are areas outside of that there might be progress. one sear reforming our nation's chemical laws that govern chemicals used in our workplaces. with that i'll close and look forward to my other panelist's

remarks. >> i know that we have some new faces in the crowd who weren't here before. if you have a device my advice is to silence it. >> so the first time i realized that something was changing in america was in september 2009 at the taxpayer march in washington. i came down to check that out and i found hundreds of thousands of people there and many were holding this nerdy libertarian signs. how did an obscure austrian economist debt on a protest sign outside capital? that is something i have never seen before in politics.

if you look at the data, there is a message about the libertarian center in american politics. this may not be how you think of freedom works. we got the most press for campaigns in the house and senate. we worked to take out and retire republican senators dick lugar, and we supported republican candidates like jeff flake and ted crews. the reason i marched in 2009 and our goal today is not about electing politicians. it is not about republicans. it is about policy change and principal. we aim to end the stalemate in washington over spending and debt. we have a bipartisan consensus to keep kicking the can down the road and spending more money that we do not have. freedom works model is a grassroots service center 2 million -- to millions of

activists, like ron paul supporters and libertarians. i would like to make three points about 2012. the first is about demographics. the second is about the tea party. the third is about grass-roots tactics. the first but demographics -- all the talk about hispanics, black voters, white males, and married women, the less understood trend is growing libertarian center of american politics. for years, exit polls have asked the question, what are your preferences on the size of government? do you believe that government should do more things to solve problems? or do you think government is doing too many things better left to individuals and businesses? in 2008, when asked that question, 51%, a majority said, government should do more to solve problems. four years later, 2012, it slipped. now 51% believe that government

is doing too many things. a majority of americans believe that government is growing too big. one other trent in the exit polls -- for the first time, americans believe that same-sex marriage should be legal in their state. 49% 246% believe that same-sex marriage should be legal. that is why it passed in maryland, maine, and washington. if you take these two data points to other, americans to believe that government is too big and drink too many things, it should stay out of things like same-sex marriage, what you find is that there is a group of this police -- this conservative, but socially liberal or moderate voters, and i wrote a book about these voters, and you can buy it on amazon, $2.99, and they tend to be voters who are moderate, oregon, will educated, and they tend to be independent.

in showed that independents were the fasting growing demographic in america with now 40% of americans calling themselves independent an all time high. the only political brand in america that is worse than democrats is republicans. in other words, most americans outside of washington don't want anything to do with the political parties. so actually the big headline in 2012 is that many of these independents stayed home. 2012 was a low turnout election. 3 percentage points fewer americans showed up in 2012 than in 2008 and fewer americans showed up this year than 2004. mitt romney barely won as many votes as john mccain did in 2008. if you compare preelection estimates to exit polls, what you find is 5 percentage points of independents didn't show up. so the party that actually figures out how to represent

these independents, and my hunch is many of them are these social liberal voters is going to be ahead in the demographic race. that's why you saw smart democrats actually run functionally libertarian campaigns. notice democrats who won, they ran on fiscal issues and distanced themselves from the president. they stole the rhetoric of fiscal conservatives. this is also why you found republican candidates who won, they ran on fiscal issues but they didn't emphasize abortion. over time, i believe the party that embraces this libertarian center of the public will come ahead in the demographic battle. the second point i'd like to make is about the tea party. some people think the tea party lost the election particularly in the senate.

and the argument goes something like that this n. 2010 there was kristine o'donnell and in 2012 there is today akin. todd akin. what we need is safe on the republican side, reliable, moderate candidates. and the lesson learned is we have to stop this tea party from taking over the process. anyone in the audience heard this argument? >> yes. >> so several points to make. first this is a pretty self- serving argument for politicians who want to get taken out in primaries. but todd akin was never tea party. he was an earmarker and opposed by every tea party group. akin was so bad he didn't even get sarah palin's endorsement. somehow after his rape comment that got national news the media labeled him tea party and it stuck.

we wouldn't touch him. we called for him to immediately drop out. but it was establishment republicans who came to try to help him in the end. the national republican senatorial committee put money in their race at the end, not tea party groups.

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[captioning performed by national captioning institute] >> i want to comment on this, because i very much agree. i think it is a fear about the masculine image of these ranches. we see that in norway after 20 years with female and disposition. many of our male colleagues have this image built up from hollywood movies. they are often very far away from the truth. that is what they fear. >> i have a specific question for you. >> i ran the navy's pt policy for a wild. the entire time i followed stuff on women in the military. occupationally, i have only seen one lowered. it was the navy's test of flexibility. it is part of the regular pt testing. you sit on the floor with your legs straight ahead, you have to be able to touch your toes.

extra points for getting beyond. we had to change that because too many men could not get extra points for going beyond. the thing that gets under their skin more than anything is the sex differential in pt. i have never heard one of them complain about the age differential. >> i wanted to ask you as we talk about previous integrations, one of the things you are hearing now is the saying, if you open the combat arms to women, you will have fewer women interested in joining the army or the marine corps, because they fear those assignments and you don't want them. people said that before they opened combat ships in the navy. what is the truth behind that? x after your hearing what i heard in the first panel, i do not think there is a lack of interest.

before 1994, when combat ships were open to women, navy women might to go to to see one time if they were lucky. my entire experience was when i was out on an island, running intelligence. i just have to go out and them sometime in the carrier. i had to be off there before sundown. because, combat ships. [laughter] there was great fear in the navy that once we opened the combat ships to women, they would find they would go to sea as often as the men. whoever their particular job rating was,that women would be bailing out, women who did not sign up for that would quit. it didn't happen. there may have been somebody that got out and, certainly, women and men in the navy and all the services have a family hole.

particularly once they are married or have children. but it's no different for men and women. it did not happen in the navy. women are a much higher percentage of the navy than they were active in 1994. they kept running, and in bigger numbers. >> along the way, a lot more women got out because of the opportunities were denied them, rather than offered to them. >> good point. >> in the canadian forces, how did integration occur? how quickly did it occur, what lessons to be learned from the way it was implement it? >> in 1987, the canadian -- could see it coming. the complaints before the tribunal. in 1987, they started a trial that was designed to determine if, when, and how restrictions to the deployment of women might be changed. in hindsight, people look back and say this was a natural part of the progression. put women into the combat arms.

look back at what happens, it was very much set up to test the impact of women on combat operational units. an important point is, when we talk about quotas, critical mass, and we talk about goals, the crew trials demanded that a certain proportion of women be in each unit, so they could evaluate their impact. what that did was grow the quota system. it created a series of perceptions around the motivations of women, the abilities of women, and that is in. -- and that sort of thing. the tribunal ruled that you would no longer have crew trials, just got on with it. the trials will no longer be used to evaluate, they will be used to integrate women. the canadian forces said, right we will change all of our

policies. it was an administrative process and our headquarters. i 1994, they said, great to have integrated women and they have equal opportunity and liability for all women in the canadian forces areas except the part of crew that was supposed to be monitoring and helping the effective integration. it was not happening. by 19 97, we had wasted a decade by possibly thinking that women could just get in there. the onus became on women. the women that were successful, they were leaders from the very beginning. they had to integrate themselves into the unit. by 1997, we conducted research and looked more closely at at the barriers and why leadership at all levels had to be engaged. it cannot just be the top saying it would happen. it had to be effective through

every level of the chain. some of the things that the colonel referred to about preparing the unit. if men in the combat arms unit were not effectively working at the women coming in, they left it to the team to sort it out, rather than leadership shaping the team. it took us a decade to get on board and actually get some effective progress living. much different today. >> thank you. the norwegian forces were already fully integrated when you joined, everything was open to women. i know everyone wants to hear about your experience as an officer. what was your role -- talk about what it was like coming up as an infantry officer in a fully integrated military? >> we still have some issues, all over. i am so excited for my american

sisters in arms. this is such great news this week. but, i also have to tell you, you have some hard work in front of you. after 28 years, we still have some issues we are struggling with. it will still take time until we can say we are truly fully integrated. my personal experience, i feel privileged to be able to have the jobs i have had. i have been very lucky to have the right commanders with the right approach to having women in their unit area i think, like she just said, leadership is vital. military leadership at every level, but also the political

leadership areas they need to encourage females to come in to the forces. we are hard on those leaders who are not able to handle having women in their unit. i questioned those men who are not able to handle, or can't accept women, how are they able to handle the missions we have? handling local populations where we deploy, and so on. this is important. personally, i have done this same job, the same training as my male colleagues. i recognize what the panel here said. it is all about being part of the team. one of my soldiers, when i was a complete commander going to bosnia, was interviewed in the media. i remember, how was it to have

a female company commander? he said, i have not really thought about it. i never had a male company commander. [laughter] that is all about being one of the team. doing your job areas my experience is that my male colleagues, as we are out doing our missions in norway or deployed, they are so dedicated about the job they are there to do. they are not caring about if there is a female next to them. the question is, are you doing your job or not? i felt support, i have really felt appreciated for the job i have done throughout these years.

both as a subordinate, but also as a commander. we do have issues. as a commander, i have struggled with female troops that had a hard time with sexual harassment. we have to work continuously to make sure that every individual in our troops, male and female, are handled like you should do. with people you are responsible for. >> you hit on some of the i same things that the first panel hit on. as far as ground combat. being part of the team, doing your job, knowing the prison -- person next to you is going to be there to take a bullet for you. tell us about your personal ground combat experience and what the characteristics are that you think are important to

holding that in doing that job in the right way, regardless of gender. >> i am humbled when i listen to the former panel. i have been in violent situations. we have had both wounded and losses. but i have a lot of the high intensity combat experience. in several years of being deployed. about the characters, which i find important. very much what was mentioned from the former panel. it is about being calm in very tough situations. make the right judgments. is not only for me as the commander, that is the same for the troops. when you have a rifle pointed at you, you have to take this very quick decision to answer, to support the one next to you and all of this very hard questions.

that is an important one. team, i absolutely agree about your team. they say, and i recognize that. when you are fighting, you are not thinking about the flag and your country and a very important things. you are thinking about the comrade next to you. we are the team, we have a job -- to do, and we had better do it well together. >> something to add? the issue of harassment. in canada what became very important was paying attention to the other policy changes and 'em me menations happening at the same time. our soldiers in the early 1990s's, we had implemented sexual harassment policies. a strong message had gone out from senior leadership that

there was zero tolerance. leadership in the combat unit feeling ill equipped to properly discipline and train and motivate their team, they were afraid of being accused of harassment. paying attention to other policy issues in things that are happening at the same time is important to us as well. >> i would like to add one more thing. what i find vital. having the right values. that is the same for men and women. that is what builds the right culture in a unit. that is what you had to focus on continuously as a leader, or as the troop. that is also the vital thing to handle what we do in this -- not only the combat branches, but every branch. handling everything from high intensity to dealing with

humanitarian assistance and local situations and so on. and then you have to be able to do your job in such a variety of tasks. >> we've talk touched a little bit on the non-physical requirements for excellence. but let's talk a little bit about the standards. a lot of questions will circulate around the establishment of standards. i am curious, the canadian forces, initially took a gender norm approach to physical standards? the standards have to be gender-neutral. but they have to be job related. not physical standards that have nothing to do with performing the job. today when they are deploying, it does not matter if you are

an infantry or anything. and it is strange and clerk rooted if you are deploying as part of the regiment, everybody does the combat fitness test together in preparation. everybody has to continue to meet the standards of their specific occupation. but there are not arbitrary standards like a certain number of pushups. it is completely related to the job. >>you have been working with the australians? >> yes. a number of us went to australia. we shared some lessons we have learned. i think for us, the two big ones that a lot of people experience question his critical mass, and the idea of training to do a job and not training to meet the physical standard and of course there's some overlaps if there's some

physical or physicalty involved there. >> physical standards, this was a huge issue when women were first taken into flight program. next year will be the 40th anniversary of the day i got my wings. it was very disheartening to hear, 39 years later that the issue was still upper body strength and bathrooms. i said to my husband, i am stunned that we haven't moved past this. it is still a huge emotional component with the physical standards. one of the ways that i handled it, on the subject of the bathroom, how you do this in a helicopter? or a cockpit. the men have a relief tube. of course, we're all familiar with that. occasionally, since there were only two our legs, but on

occasion it did become an issue for me. i have to say one of the first things that happened to me when i got into the squadron, the men were all talking about this. they presented me with a little gift on my third flight. it was an oxygen mask with a large tube and a sponge attached. this was my version of the relief tube. i thought it was kind of a good idea. [laughter] it is such an emotional issue. you cannot avoid the fact that, for guys it is all about the upper body strength, we are stronger than you. the truth of the matter is, that is not what it takes. 99% of the time that's not what it takes. so again, gender-neutral physical requirements are the way to go. also, very related to the job.

i cannot say that -- i had a lot of upper body strength from riding horses and shoveling what comes out the other end. that served me well in the military. that particular skill. [laughter] it really was not an issue, except in the minds of the people who opened the flight program to women. >> they touched on the idea of critical mass. and when general dunphy and the seak taxpayer of defense, leon panetta, had their press conference, general dunphy was asked about women in special forces. he talked about standards. he went on to talk about critical mass. he said, i think we all believe there will be women who can meet this standard. the other part of the equation

is, in order to account for their safety and success in those units, we have to have enough of them so that you know they have mentors and leaders above them. you wouldn't want to take one woman who could meet the standards and the issue there would not be privacy. it would be, where is her ability to compete for command? i know we all have an opinion, it would be nice, but most of us have gone through as one of one. what to think about about this idea? what is the idea of one of one? >> i am not sure where that came from. maybe that was under advisement. and that makes me know cents. -- but that makes absolutely no sense.

first of all, you do not need women mentors for women. all of my mentors were men. that's just the wrong setting to be setting from a leadership climate. i was the only woman in my fighter squadron for a long time. you try to figure out how to put us in pairs. usually we are our own worst enemies. you are actually better off as just one of you when you get going. the reality that we needed women to be with each other in that critical mass was not how we integrated women into flying. they tried when i was an instructor to divide students. female flight students, like let's put them together in a flight instead of separating them. i was the one who put the kibosh on that. that creates resentment in men.

well, women have to be together in this time. but when they go on missions they are not going to be together. it is not smart all around. to the one on one comment makes no sense. you are evaluated based on your group and peers, not your gender. that evaluation language that somehow a woman would we looked -- be looked at by herself for promotion unless there was to in the unit --if that is really how they are forming had to do this, that is the wrong direction. we need to make sure we are continuing to recruit the most capable force. for our all-volunteer force. we need to get out into high schools to get the best men and women for jobs. except those right standards. if you end up being the only woman in your unit, that is fine. it is a leadership issue. the leadership sets the climate. whether it comes down to bathrooms and showers, we have all worked this out.

this is silliness. just make sure they have the right command chain to make sure that people are treated and are able to be mentored and can meet their promotion like everybody else. 30 seconds in the physical standard -- it continues to be this red herring. when debating whether to open fighters were women. it was the same. they don't have the upper body strength. i was getting ready to go to fighter training. i have just completed a triathlon. we have guys standing up saying that women do not have the endurance. to do combat missions. i sat there, do not say nothing. just breathe. finally, you can just cannot help yourself. like, dude, you want to go

outside and talk about this? let's go for a run. [laughter] the difficulty, i am seeing this in the debate still going on, even though the train has left the station. a lot of people gives this can get away with, you have been excluded from doing this. so you have not done it. and i have done it. therefore you can't do it. sure you've been in combat. i'm sure you're seen the new wonses on tv. sure you've been in combat, you've engaged with the enemy, you've responded to firepower. that is different then sustained offensive operations. that is the language you are hearing right now. on fox anyway. [laughter] right now, the strength it takes to engage in sustained operations. something that a woman can do. justin bieber can do it but venus williams cannot? seriously? [laughter]

so this honestly comes down to, i encourage you all -- this is one of my talking points. it's about -- not about individuals, it is about standards and capabilities. yes, men, upper body strength, we have to treat people as individuals. of all the challenges we have had in the combat zone with conduct and behavior of our soldiers. where we have had issues. it has never been about physical strength. it is usually about discipline and restraint. leadership. strategic errors. we had no problem lowering the standards in 2005 in high school education and medical conditions and aptitude test and felony records. we had no problems lowering the standards to meet the force. but we need to look at the other 51% of the force. our soldiers need strength and endurance. they also need leadership, teamwork, courage, restraint, wisdom.

all the things we saw on that last panel. that is what makes up a strategic corporal these days. in the complex environments whoo in. so strength is one minor issue. get over it. >> i agree with most of what she said. [laughter] but i think it is very important when we are discussing females, we are talking about very physical demanding jobs. you have to have a certain physical standard. it is very tough to be and one of these units if you do not meet the requirements. >> i agree there. >>you had to leave -- in norway, well, we are so technologically advanced, we do not need the physical standard. that is not the truth. patrolling in afghanistan, it is still very hard.